I can dream but I know that I am not going to be doing any long range cruising with this S2. Just hope to run back and forth here on the Delta with an occaisional trip out to SFBay. With my time I do hope to make another trip out to the Farallon Islands. With that said i want to have a nice system that will keep some cans cold, a bottle of wine or two, condiments, etc.. I figure that a cooling system will draw a bit of power under sail and drawing off the battery bank. The amount I don't know how to figure. A note: I am running a Furuno Doppler radar system and really haven't had a chance to play with it yet but between that and the Navionics plotter and all I'm thinking that a cooling system will need to be able to cool and maintain the coolness without too much of a power drain. Was thinking maybe to add a wind vane, but another project. Any recommendations on a manufacturer and start there. I have plenty of room, the lazarette is just on the other side of the bulkhead to hold a compressor and the panel is only 10ish feet away from the "ice" box. If I'm going to do it I want a good cold system so the next owner will be able to enjoy her as much as me. Thanks, look forward to advice. Hal
If you are on shore power, and plan on day sailing mostly, you should be ok with either a built in or portable fridge. I have a 215 AH battery bank (2 golf cart 6-volts) and I day sail all summer with the fridge running. Return to dock and shore power every night. I went out for a 3-day, 2-night sail last summer…I froze a gallon jug of water and out in the fridge, and turned the fridge off to save power (I don’t have solar). Worked great.
You should determine a few key pieces of info…
1) what is the capacity and condition of your battery bank?
2) what is your power consumption? Each piece of 12-volt equipment has a draw…radio, stereo, nav lights, cabin lights, chart plotter, radar, auto pilot, etc. The fridge is probably the largest draw…mine is between 5-7 amps When the compressor is running…which should not be100% of the time…but it depends on the insulation of the box, ambient temps, the temp of the stuff you put in the fridge, etc.
I used a digital volt meter with a current clamp to get an approximate draw of each component…turned everything off, put the clamp on the positive wire off the battery bank, and turned on 1 component at a time to see what sort of amps it would draw.
On a wind vane, I would probably go with Garmin, but if you want it to talk to a RayMarine AP or your Chart plotter, you should check compatibility and communications.
have fun with her,
Greg