Summer brought friends and familiar faces.
In June sister boat Polar Pacer with Tom and Chris aboard arrived at Schroeder's Yacht Sytems boatyard with a list of work they wanted to do. We had met Chris and Tom soon after they bought their boat in Port Credit, Ontario and it was great to see them again and the changes they have made to their boat. They each have special talents and make difficult tasks seem easy. They worked through their long list of jobs with a speed and efficiency that make us look like we are standing still. For a look at what they have done see their blog. [I took several shots of Polar Pacer to insert here and they have disappeared - nowhere to be found]
The semi-annual trip home was wonderful as we got together with family and saw good friends we hadn't seen for years. But it was hard on our aging car. The brakes failed completely while we were up north and Chris ended up having to put in a new brake line after finding the original one corroded through. On our return trip we had to stop part way when metal against metal turned out to be lifetime sealed units reaching the end of their lifetime. And almost as soon as we drove back into the boat yard our front wheel bearing let us know that it's time had come. Doing the work we are doing here it is necessary to have a vehicle and we need to baby ours until it can finally retire. It certainly doesn't owe us anything, but we need her to last just that little bit longer. Bobby the boatyard's mechanic generously gave of his spare time to replace the bearing, not once but twice, as the first bearing we bought turned out to be the wrong one. It was super nice of him!
Replacing the bearing - advice at the ready
One of our projects is tearing out the built-in fridge and replacing it with a stand-alone Engel freezer. Engel units have a great reputation, popular with long distance truck drivers, RV-ers and boaters, among others. They take very little power once having reached temperature, which is a huge plus. Our unit can be either a fridge OR a freezer, but there are units which have both in one. Our original refrigeration system consisted of two boxes, one smaller than the other. The larger one also had a very small freezer section (think two boxes of spinach) and it was all run by a compressor which had taken up residence (and most of the space) in the top of an adjoining cupboard. The original cold boxes had perished and HAD to come out so it seemed a good time to rethink the whole food storage thing.
Original cold boxes. The compressor was in a cupboard to the left front of the picture.
The small freezer compartment was in the top back of the larger compartment
We were amazed at the amount of insulation surrounding the original boxes. In fact, the entire section of hull surrounding the fridge was filled with foam insulation and we probably took out at least 12 large black garbage bags full of foam. A fun job completed with the help of 2 bread knives (the first one broke), a grapefruit knife, scraper, a pry bar,and other assorted tools. Once the foam was all out we insulated the sides of the hull with cork sheet and installed the supports for a slide-out tray that will hold the freezer in place.
Insulating foam remaining after cold boxes removed
Removing the foam
All the foam out
Engel (in it's insulated bag) in position
Engel slid out on it's tray
Our plan is to use the Engel as a freezer most of the time. If we need a fridge we have an Engel cooler, which we can keep cool by taking blocks of ice out of the freezer. Well, that's the plan...
