currently in:  George Town, Exuma, Bahamas
current date:  14 April 2005

Over the past few weeks, our refrigerator has been slowly becoming more and more inefficient, requiring more run time to accomplish less cooling. Earlier this year,40 minutes of compressor time would result in 10 hours of cold fridge; now the compressor was running for well over an hour four or five times a day, using up our battery power and driving us crazy. (The compressor chills down a holding plate which keeps the box cold, kind of like a mechanical hunk of ice. A temperature probe monitors the plate temperature and triggers the compressor when it warms.) At first we thought that it was just the hot weather and our less-than-perfect insulation. As things got worse, we thought that perhaps the temperature probe was in a bad place, and moved it, but the fridge performance continued to deteriorate. One day we left the boat for four hours just as the compressor began to run; when we came back and it was still running, the plate temperature not even close to where it needed to be, we realized that something was seriously wrong.

We emailed the company that had made our refrigeration system (Glacier Bay) with our symptoms: long compressor run time, inability to get down to cold temperatures, lower than normal amp draw (power drain). They confirmed Britt's guess that the refrigerant gas had leaked out of our system over the past five years - normal behavior, according to them - and provided instructions for topping off the refrigerant level.

At the time we were near Staniel Cay, which we doubted had a refrigeration repairman, so we waited for the next front to pass and headed south toward George Town. As it happened, the front's windshifts had beaten down the usual big waves in Exuma Sound, and we had two lovely sailing days, pulling in to Elizabeth Harbor on Sunday afternoon. Our disappointment at not having the time to go snorkeling for fish (and of not catching anything on our trolling lines) was tempered with the realization that we didn't have a working fridge to keep any fish in!

On the George Town cruisers' VHF net the next morning, we asked for information on getting a refrigerator topped off with more coolant. The good news was that George Town has a refrigeration repairman; the bad news was that they have only one, and he's very busy; the good news was that although this type of work requires a certification in the US, the Bahamas will sell cannisters of refrigerant gas to anyone.

Several people in the harbor had worked on their own refrigerators, and were happy to give advice. Ed on Joybells loaned Britt a leak detector; with it, he determined we had no big leaks in our system. This meant that probably tiny bits had just leaked out over time, rather than there being one sudden failure, and that just refilling the system would be all that was needed. Eric on Elysia told us that we could get the gas and the necessary flare connector at the big hardware store three miles west of George Town, and suggested that we could get by without a gauge set by simply watching the amp draw and adding enough coolant to bring it up to the former level. (We'd met Elysia a few times during our first cruising stint, but hadn't seen them since 2001, so it was fun to make contact again.)

It sounded pretty straightforward. But as anyone who has ever owned a boat knows, even a simple fix is always complicated. Britt had to make not one but two trips to the hardware store to get all the pieces needed to put together a hose to connect from the gas cannister to our system - and since we're not carrying bikes this year, he had to hitchhike. Fortunately, hitchhiking is an easy and accepted way of traveling in the Bahamas, and he had no problem getting rides (as well as interesting conversation with a variety of Bahamians). Once he got the gas and the parts and assembled a hose that could connect the gas cannister to the suction side of our fridge system, we hooked things up and started the compressor running.

The instructions in the manual had presented a bit of a paradox: in order to determine the correct amount of refrigerant to add, the holding plate temperature had to be below below 30°, but we couldn't cool the plate to 30° without first adding refrigerant! I monitored the amp draw while he controlled the gas flow, adding just enough to bring the amp draw near its former level of 34 amps. This jump-started the cold plate, as it were, and after a half-hour of compressor time it was down to the magic 30° level. Now we could follow the instructions, checking the sight glass on one of our refrigeration components and adding refrigerant just until the glass was full.

We let the compressor run until the plate looked fairly frozen - about 24° on the probe. (The plate is filled with a chemical that freezes at 26°.) At that point we turned off the compressor...and crossed our fingers. As the day went by, we anxiously glanced at the fridge readout, watching the numbers climb. Five hours later the plate temperature hit 30° and the compressor tripped on; we both dropped our books and alternately watched the temperature readout and the clock. The numbers on the readout obediently ticked lower and lower with gratifying speed, reaching 24° in only 20 minutes. Hooray! No more listening to the compressor slug on for hours! No more having to run our engine for power every other day!

We have a working refrigerator again, hooray. Now all we need to do is catch some fish to put in it!