Extreme coolboxes

[Simpo Two]

Not sure if this is the right forum but as it's for a boat I'll persevere.

My boat has no fridge; I use a normal coolbox which is OK for 24 hours but not much more. As it has a petrol engine (the boat not the coolbox) I can only have an electric fridge which would expensive and marginal on power.

Then I stumbled upon 'extreme' coolboxes such as the Coleman Xtreme 36 http://www.coleman.com/coleman/colemancom/detail.a... and Yeti http://www.coolboxesuk.co.uk/shop-online/all.html

These claim to keep ice frozen in warm ambient temps for 5-10 days; I just wondered if anyone else uses them or has any thoughts?

[Simpo Two]

buy a boat with a solid deck

[Simpo Two]

m0ssy said:

no thanks, i will buy a boat with a gas fridge, gas heated water, seperate climate controlled heater for cabin and deck areas, sleeping for 8 but six comfortably and of course twin turbo diesels

I also have a twin-turbo diesel but it's in the car, whilst my boat has a petrol car engine. Weird eh?!

The Engel fridge sees rather overkill for my needs but thanks for the suggestion.

[Simpo Two]

badgerade said:

Is there room for a small 3ish kg propane/ butane canister? You can get fridges that run on gas/12v/240v... Plug it into the mains before you leave to cool it down, 12v in the car then gas. We use one for long camping trips.

There is, in fact there's already a Calor Gas cyclinder at the stern for the cooker, but it would catastrophically fail the BSS safety regs - anything that mixes gas and petrol in the same space is viewed very dimly; the burner (eg a Propex heater) has to be sealed/vented to the outside.

You can get fridges with seperate condensers that could perhaps be sealed in such a way but really it's not worth the aggro. I've spent a year chewing over options from Engel/Waeco downwards and in reality a simple carry on/carry off coolbox is the simplest answer. But a normal one is not adequate.


(At least I'm nowhere near Motovator's 8Kw generator; I expect he plays frightful pop music as well...)

Edited by Simpo Two on Tuesday 2nd August 18:10

[Simpo Two]

Yachtworker said:

Those Coleman & Yeti boxes work great, judge how often you use the boat for how long and what you want to keep cool, if its just milk, bacon, butter that sort of stuff, a cool box with ice packs will work for a long weekend no probs... Keep it simple and it will always work

That's good to hear. I like simple (shut up Motorvator) and it's quite fun that the entire electrical content of my boat are two batteries, a starter motor and four light bulbs

MOTORVATOR said:

If you like I could get you a berth next to me. In fact there seem to be quite a few berths available both sides.

For £550pa including craning and winter storage you could have a deal, but I think the water in your area is grey and lumpy. And deep, with lots of drowned people and broken boats underneath.

But maybe you could rent HMS Simpo as a tender and simply crane it onto one of your many decks...?


Back to coolboxes. Having fully weighed up the options for Yetis etc, the ones with about the right volume are remarkably low, too low in fact to take a bottle of tonic water. Without tonic water there is no gin & tonic and without that, well, you may as well go home. And then suddenly all my brain cells moved in the same direction at once, a scary thing indeed. I realised that my '24-hr' coolbox, whilst double skinned, has no insulation! Hence I plan to drill some strategic holes and blast it with expanding foam (just like a certain roof)

There is a possibility I suppose that the foam will dissolve the plastic but it's worth a punt!

[Simpo Two]

danyeates said:

I sell the Coleman and the Igloo boxes.

Have you got anything in the 30 litre area that can take a 31cm tall bottle? The Coleman 36 is only 20cm inside!

danyeates said:

it kept the ice blocks frozen for the whole of the British Grand Prix

We presume the whole weekend and not just two hours!

[Simpo Two]

danyeates said:

I sell the Coleman and the Igloo boxes.

Igloo Marine 25qt (23Ltr) Coldbox looks promising but I can't find internal dimensions - can you? But I don't think it is 'extreme'.

Edited by Simpo Two on Wednesday 3rd August 09:40

[Simpo Two]

Thanks Dan, as I suspected.

Expanding foam it is then!

[Simpo Two]

Burrow01 said:

Just use the 125ml cans of tonic Saves it going flat in a bottle as well

That's actually not a dumb idea, if you overlook the cost per ml. I also like the idea that you'd have some tonic left over, so would have to add more gin. But it wouldn't work for a bottle of wine/2pt bottle of milk.

I have my £6.18 can of B&Q expanding foam and I'm going in!