Living Without a Fridge

[nauticalnomad]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

All that preach to go without fridge are living in houses with fridges and freezers and what not

The ones that truly go without are eating cold beans straight from cans because it makes them feel tough and macho

Us wimps on the other hand, have fridges and freezers aboard and prepare meals that are a form of art. Strangely, all those who have no fridge aboard would love to be invited for a cold beer (wonder why that isn't a subject yet) and dinner... while they themselves can never return the favor because they have no cold beers and dinner to serve. Guess what, polarization starts right there

The end result is that those who can't afford a fridge come up with a thousand excuses and reasons why it is better without a fridge. They still fish for invitations though...

ciao!
Nick.

Yeah but thats creating an argument..
I eat cold tinned beans sometimes cause i couldnt be bothered cooking them not cause its tough lol.
Cold beer comes from beneath the floor within the bilges. its colder than the crap they were serving in england.. So sea temp is fine.
And if the beer isnt cold enough to drink, rum is fine luke warm.
Ive got no room for a bigger fridge i opted for more a mini workshop over a bigger galley.
Priorities first and all that on a wooden boat.
The fridge i have got is only small enough for a few beers, consumes gas/battery power etc. I class it as my enemy when at sea...

[John Drake]

N32, you beat me to it.

Think about how many hundreds of years, people lived without a fridge. Even fairly recently, just a few short decades ago, many did not have one.

Many things we keep in the fridge do not need to be cold. Butter, eggs and many condiments.

Even thoguh Invictus has an excellent Adler Barbour, I cruised for 3 yrs without using the fridge at all. At first I did this to save power, so that the power budget of the boat was perfectly fine with only the one 125W solar panel. Then....it was clear that I could store much more food, for very long periods of time, if it did not need refridgeration. I stocked up on pasta, canned meats and meats in foil packets (mostly seafood). Canned milk for coffer, powdered milk and UHT for cereal. And actually, I switched from cold cereal to hot oatmeal for breakfast....and found that was healthier.

Most other things, such as breads, you can bake or find anywhere fresh. Veggies and fruits as well. So, shopped locally for veggies, fruits and breads, everything could be provisioned and stored for long periods.

Made life very simple. Did not have to plan meals around what was going to go bad.

And...if I wanted to eat locally for any period of time...not a problem...nothing aboard would spoil. Actually made life easier and less expensive because nothing was wasted.

Hope this helps

Best

J

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

All that preach to go without fridge are living in houses with fridges and freezers and what not

The ones that truly go without are eating cold beans straight from cans because it makes them feel tough and macho

Us wimps on the other hand, have fridges and freezers aboard and prepare meals that are a form of art. Strangely, all those who have no fridge aboard would love to be invited for a cold beer (wonder why that isn't a subject yet) and dinner... while they themselves can never return the favor because they have no cold beers and dinner to serve. Guess what, polarizing starts right there

The end result is that those who can't afford a fridge come up with a thousand excuses and reasons why it is better without a fridge. They still fish for invitations though...

ciao!
Nick.

Nick, could you not offer your experience without ascribing negative attributes to those who choose to do things a different way? This is how these threads go sideways. Instead of demanding that your way is the only way, or the best way, why not offer your obvious extensive experience, but allow space for the possibility that there may be other answers.

[captain58sailin]

No one was knocking refrigeration, or those whom have it, merely an observation that one could live with out it and live well. One of the things that was most sought after, after a crossing was the ice cold beer at the Pan Am hotel in Tahiti. The point is that most of us could live without a lot of the extras. Deprivation is a source of appreciation.

[Wotname]

Well cold beer is very very nice on a hot day but warm beer is OK if there is no cold beer.

This is the concept of Kimberly cool

[ovrmyhead]

Family of five aboard with no fridge. Dont get me wrong we would LOVE one and its on the want list, just not at the top. So it is possible to get by without one if you must, but if you dont have to... why? I added another 2" of styrofoam to the inside of our icebox so when we can get ice we load it up and try n make it last and when we walk by a tienda that sells ice cream I almost never tell the kids no. After all, they dont get it on the boat.
On a side note, anybody know where a guy can get an Engel or comparable in Mexico?
Nautical Nomad, how do I go about smoking fish and meats onboard? Do you just use the oven?

[CFR]

Hi folks i didnt want to turn the question in such a direction.
Just for Nick: i can afford the fridge, the solar panels , the microwave BUT i dont want them. Thats all to say.

I want sailing to be a little bit different from the last 45 years living in a nice house and i hate to worry about things, and to be honest there are so many things i have to pay attention to so the less the better. I remember my best time going thru the sahara desert for 2 month without any cold beer or paddling whitewater in north sweden for weeks ....

I just started to prepare my own cans or better glasses with sauce bolognese, some nice hungarion gulasch or even a nice cake which taste me better than my deepfreezed ones at home. And i would have to spoil a very nice wooden cabinet with hangers etc at the boat to install a fridge, so for the timebeing i will start without it.

Now i am looking for a thermal cooker ......to save gas

[cfarrar]

Non-binary solutions to this dilemma:

- small, exceptionally well-insulated fridge
- use the fridge only when you have fresh produce on board
- small portable fridge
- cruise in cold water and enjoy your cold beer

[Bash]

Originally Posted by justwaiting

Lets face it people sail long before fridges and today we have the advantage over then of dehydrated foods, vacuum packing foods to extend shelf lives.

Ah yes, the good ol' days when the lucky sailors died of scurvy rather than botulism.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Bash

Ah yes, the good ol' days when the lucky sailors died of scurvy rather than botulism.

Ahhhhh... but that woz coz the Captains were short rationing they limes... and lets face it.. your more likely to get botulism from TacoBell or Mc Crap than from one of my curry's...
It'd immunise you from anything for a month
and revitalise your vitals...

[annk]

Well it's horses for courses isn't it!

We have a mechanical fridge on board, it hasn't worked for the last three years....I use it as an icebox when we are able to buy block ice. This will last 7-9 days depending on where we are cruising.

Do I miss refrigeration? Sometimes. However the truth is that fresh produce like meat will only keep around 5 days so after that we have to rely on canned goods anyway! So I can meats, ready meals, fruit, butter, pate, some veggies. Grow sprouts and herbs. Bake bread etc.

It suits us. We love the self-sufficiency aspect of cruising. Don't drink beer so don't hanker for a cold one! Wrap a wet cloth around a wine bottle, hang it in the rigging and let evaporation do it'd stuff, it's good enough!

Maybe we'll replace the clapped out compressor one of these days but right now it doesn't affect our cruising and we are never in one place long enough to get the part delivered!

Oh and we entertain all the time, usually the 'flash boats' that have run out of power to feed their freezers and microwaves, wink!

[mikereed100]

I'm going out on a limb and guessing that most advocating no refrigeration are single. I lived aboard without for over 30 years and did fine. Dinner was usually whatever was offered for free at local happy hours and at sea I ate out of cans and was happy. I got to be a pretty good "canover" cook, adding one can over another until done. Then I got married. I have managed to avoid hot water heaters, washer/dryers, watermakers and even, until recently, marine heads, but I had to cave on the refer and have not regretted it. The value of an ice-cold beer when it's 33 degrees out is not to be understated. I have even gotten used to fresh food.
I made our box out of 6" thick XPS and put in a Frigoboat system that draws about 30 amp hours/day. We have solar panels and a modest, for our boat size, battery bank of 450 amps that I have never drawn down to less than 90% even on cloudy days. The refer is dead quiet, no pumps, and the electricity is free. I get a kick out of putting in a tub of water in the morning and busting out a block of ice in the afternoon for margaritas.
The system is very simple, and if it goes TU I should be able to fix it myself. If not I still have a kick-ass cooler. Sure you can sail without refrigeration but my wife thanks me every day for it and as I smugly flick the ice off my beer bottle before slipping it into it's cozy I have to agree that for us, at least, it is worth the trouble.

Mike

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Nick, could you not offer your experience without ascribing negative attributes to those who choose to do things a different way? This is how these threads go sideways. Instead of demanding that your way is the only way, or the best way, why not offer your obvious extensive experience, but allow space for the possibility that there may be other answers.

I am afraid you completely missed the point of me being here. I am not getting paid to serve you with experienced information at all... you can't complain about my style of writing or what I should include and what not, because you didn't buy my writings (not that I sell any ). I am here for my own enjoyment, and if that includes some free advice based on my experience you can take that and use it, or just ignore it otherwise. I'm just a guy on a forum for you, I don't get hurt when you ignore me and I have been de-programmed from all the government conspiracies years ago and can't be re-programmed anymore either:


I also think you got it backwards: I called those without refrigeration tough and macho and I called myself and others like me with our fridges and freezers weak and wimps. If that irritates you because you have refrigeration but don't want to be considered a wimp, then please take my way of wording things as a bad form of humor because really, annoying you was not in my mind when I wrote it and you could have known that I think. I did not attack you at all, but feel attacked by you.

If on the other hand you are irritated of what I wrote about invitations for dinner and cold beers then I can't help that. It's just the truth and the way things work out in the cruising grounds, I'm just telling what I see. So let me reword it: those without fridges tend to be single, hang at the bar until it closes and then eat cold beans from cans. Sure there are enough exceptions to argue about this statement for ever. My first reply would be that what is spend at the bar in a week would pay for the refrigeration for 10 years... you see where that leads? Not anywhere interesting and it's in the CF archives a hundred times already

The mistake I made is assuming we all live aboard our boats (this being a cruisers forum that originally targeted cruisers) in the tropics. It's the same mistake that others here make assuming that we live aboard in cold England where a bilge can produce a cold beer

In the tropics you need the fridge. In climates where it's as cold as in my fridge you don't need one... obviously

I already saw a reply further on about a family living aboard without a fridge: a true exception to what I wrote and I recognize that these exceptions exist. However, for healthy nutrition in the tropics you need a fridge or go to the market every single day.

An icebox is fridge equivalent of course. If you have an ice box and access to ice then you will be good. The problem is that you will not be able to spend much time in places that are most interesting without either eating unhealthy or eating the local food... which often is unhealthy too.

ciao!
Nick.

[Bash]

Originally Posted by mikereed100

I'm going out on a limb and guessing that most advocating no refrigeration are single.

Funny. Wonderblond is in Germany this week, and everything I've eaten since she left has come out of a can. A few more weeks of this bachelor lifestyle and I'd be thinking I could live without a fridge as well.

Excepting the cold beer, of course.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by captain58sailin

No one was knocking refrigeration, or those whom have it, merely an observation that one could live with out it and live well. One of the things that was most sought after, after a crossing was the ice cold beer at the Pan Am hotel in Tahiti. The point is that most of us could live without a lot of the extras. Deprivation is a source of appreciation.

Well, this is actually where I disagree, no matter how unlikely that sounds. You can't live well without it in the tropics. Like Bash already wrote, people died horrible deaths from scurvy, dysentery, plague and dozens diseases as horrible or worse. You wouldn't live to celebrate your 40th birthday in those days.

The reason you manage to do this, is because you depend on others with fridges... like the Pan Am hotel in Tahiti, or the supermarket where you quickly go to buy healthy things like vegetables or fruits when you arrive somewhere. In between, you eat unhealthy during the passage, but you survive because you start healthy and the passage time is limited. In the old days they did not manage just fine. They arrived in a state of disease and decay and many passed away at sea.

If you would sail for say a remote part of Kuna Yala here in Panama and stay there at anchor, you will get in trouble after some time. But we can stay there without resupply for 6 months or more. In fact, after 6 months we still eat fresh steaks. Without refrigeration your only option is to buy food from the Indians (catching/gathering yourself is often/mostly forbidden) and I can assure you that it will be much more expensive than having a fridge.

I have sailed for 20 years without refrigeration; I know how it works. It works so-so in cold climates like Holland/England. The beer wasn't too cool most of the time, or frozen the rest of the time. Ah, now I remember why I left

ciao!
Nick.