OK, these weren’t the exact lyrics of the Carly Simon song. But they apply here. As mentioned in a previous blog, our air conditioning isn’t working and we’re waiting for parts from Italy. They were ordered over a month ago, but they just shipped last week. Now they’re stuck in customs in Newark because of a commercial invoice error. To make matters worse, our freezer died in the height of last week’s heat wave, and our refrigerator was struggling. So we are NOT frozen.
You can cruise without an air conditioner or freezer, but if refrigeration poops out, unless you’re OK living on canned or dry food, it’s pretty much over. So, on the recommendation of Amel expert, Bill Rouse, we decided to buy a cheap dorm fridge as a backup.
To do so, we needed to find a harbor with a Walmart nearby. And so, we set sail from Provincetown to Onset, Massachusetts, with a Walmart a 15 minute Uber ride from the town dock.
We had to do this at 6:00 in the morning, in the rain, in order to be back to the boat for our departure time. This was determined to meet favorable tidal currents through the narrow Woods Hole gap between Buzzards Bay and the Nantucket Sound.
We wrestled the fridge from the Uber to our 10 ft dinghy, and onto Fregata. We’ve managed to get the fridge working (at least until the next heat wave), so the dormn fridge is now a decorative ornament. If the fridge stays stable, we’ll donate it to a college dorm near a future port . That’s where it belongs.
We often think about sailing in the old days, before engines, GPS, and electricity. But how did they survive without Walmart!?
I’ve learned how to repair many things on Fregata, but refgrigeration is above my pay grade, and requires an arsenal of special tools. We have lined up a refrigeration technician next week in the Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island to look at the freezer.
Regarding the air conditioner, well back to Carly… ANTICIPATION!
One Response
Hey Dan. We traveled all over the Caribbean trying to get our refrigerator repaired. We spent a ton of money on repairs and ice. Finally brought the boat back to Rochester and didn’t have any better success than the experts. So I decided this can’t be rocket science. I bought a set of gauges and a can of refrigerant at Harbor Freight. Now every spring, I give my frig a little blast of refrigerant and it lasts the season.