It’s currently a full-on working frenzy as we try to wrap up all the boat projects during our last week of house sitting. I’m spending way too many hours in the wood shop trying to complete the seemingly endless list of stuff to make life aboard Dream Catcher manageable once more.

I got the parts for the Yamaha 30 installed and tested. The engine seems to run fine, but I haven’t had time to take it for a long test spin to verify we’ve overcome our over heating problems. I guess that will have to wait until we’re back on board for that one.

The new fridge went in pretty easily, but I am still in the progress of installing new, sliding doors inside the fridge box to shrink the amount of cooled space down to a manageable number. With the evaporator from the old Adler Barbour unit out of the way, our box measures in at a whopping 6.5 cubic feet which is more than twice as big as necessary for our purposes.

The new Engel unit was developed to cool an area of less than 3 cubic feet to 0 degrees. Since we are using it as a fridge and not a freezer, best estimates say that our new unit should maintain 40 degrees Fahrenheit with a one third to one half duty cycle in that same area foot print. My new sliding doors are a 2.5 inch, insulated construction that should have an R value almost as efficient as the panels used to make the original box. Since they are contained wholly within the existing insulated box, I’m not too worried if they aren’t perfect. In fact, a little spill over might be a good thing as the new, non-refrigerated  section might be usable as a holding area for veggies or sodas.

There are about a billion other projects that I’m working on at the same time and I hope to document them when we return to the boat next week. In the meantime, lobster season has started once again and the hunting has been good. Weather has only allowed me to get out twice since the opening, but both times I have reached my max bug count of 6 within 2 hours.

And speaking of sea life, yesterday Amy opened up the freezer to score one of our dwindling supply of Kit Kat’s, but she was unaware of our newly installed Freezer Monster Protection System (FMPS). A startled “Ahhhhhh!” was her response when she noticed several pair’s of eyes peering intently at her from inside a few Ziplocs. Ha, that’ll be the last time she tries to steal my candy bars.

More to follow, end of line …