Frankenfreezer

Sometimes you just have to FIX some things.

Readers may recall we’ve had some struggles with out freezer, mostly relating to it leaking refrigerant – that actually seems fixed.  There is one other design flaw in it that also causes occasional troubles in the tropics – we can’t open the fool thing.  Basically it freezes shut.  This unfortunately is due to way it is made and the attempt to make it pretty; you know, match the aesthetic interior of the boat.

Well that’s all over.

Lifting eye ring from the freezer.

Hallberg-Rassy uses a lovely mahogany all over the inside of the boat, all the furniture, cabinetry and woodwork is well done and high quality.  Once upon a time the top of the freezer matched all that lovely woodwork, with a nice stainless steel ring pull that you’d put your finger through to gently pull up the freezer lid.  The refrigerator, by comparison, is embedded in the hard white corian-like substance on the galley counters – there is no wood and no problems.  But the freezer door is a three+ inch thick sandwich of Mahogany plywood with foam in the middle of it.  And that ring isn’t so comfy to stick your finger into if you need to apply any actual force to it.

When we first arrived in the tropics we noticed the freezer had started to sweat.  We thought it might be inadequate insulation so we carefully laid a thick folded towel on it for more insulation.  Mistake…this made it sweat even more.  The constant sweating started causing some problems, notably cracks in the varnish around the base of the door, and the presence of moisture between the sides of the freezer and the angled side of the lid.  Never mind what this was doing to the finish on top of the freezer.

Water, of course, freezes.  And the stickiness of the door began.  Add that to the intrusion of some moisture through the cracks in the varnish and the additional humidity of just being in the tropics and you also get a little swelling.

We tried a number of approaches.  We added foam insulation around the bottom of the door to help hold in moisture and cold.  This helped the sweating, but the foam needs to be changed from time to time when it gets compressed.  We added a string to the finger loop for more leverage (with less pain…), then we passed a lever through the string or used a T-handle from the engine room door.  Over night it would swell and freeze up, the next day a firm tug would free it up.  When the string broke we replaced it with a piece of Spectra (really tough string!).  Eventually the first pull ring broke and I jury-rigged a metal loop to it so that we could still pull on it while we awaited a replacement ring.  When we found a replacement ring fitting we were back to the original setup and had to re-add the spectra string for leverage.  But we could use a little T-handle to open it up, that provided enough grip and leverage.  Until two nights ago.

Two nights ago was pizza night, and someone was also looking for a Martini at cocktail hour.  The freezer Would. Not. Budge.  Not one bit.  Given that the cheese, pepperoni, bacon, martini shakers, ice and other crucial dinner ingredients were trapped in the freezer this was becoming critical.  So I pulled harder and ripped the ring pull and its three screws right out of the wood.

No problem!  We have some five minute epoxy – I can put some wood back in the threads of the old holes, squish some epoxy in and an hour later to cure, presto!  It’s slightly harder to completely rip the ring pull off the next time I try and open it.  This thing is STUCK!

Oh yeah, that’s MY carpentry work!

Eventually it dawns on me that this is not opening any time soon without extraordinary effort, and we will need to do some cabinetry work on this at some time in the near future.  Although I am terrible at working with wood in the sense of making not look ugly when I’m done, I can hire a carpenter like the best of them.  So I decided up a solution that is within my limited carpentry skills.  A metal repairing panel, a few screws, and we’re back to the ring and spectra solution.  For the curious, the “leverage” does double duty as the handle to pump the hydraulic backstay/vang adjuster.

Kathy demonstrates proper opening of the Frankenfreezer

Lovely, isn’t it?  Martinis and pizza all around…

HELP WANTED:  Competent finish carpenter to undo my handiwork.  Rates negotiable, bring own tools.