By: R. Brintnall

Icebox upgrade

Like many old boats of its era, the very first Catalina 30’s were built with a ridiculous camper style frontloading ice box. They have to be pegged shut, are prone to rust, and go through more ice than a coast guard cutter. Catalina corrected this disaster early in the production run by building a more typical top-loading icebox in the aft area of the boat’s generous counter space and replaced the hole left by the front loader with a nice set of drawers for even more galley storage. 

However, to follow Catalina’s lead would be a difficult and expensive bit of high-end cabinetry work, sometimes hard to justify in boats of this age and market value. We chose to try a more practical solution we’ve seen in a few other very old Catalina 30s. We replaced the old front loading ice box with a A/C powered dorm fridge that will at least give us real refrigeration in port, and we planned to adapted the ice try and drain tube from the old unit to make the fridge an ice box for underway. 

The first step was just to remove the old unit. That gave us clear dimensions of what we needed to replace it, and a look at how it was seated. Our first surprise was that the old unit really had no support underneath; it just sort of hung into the hole from its face. The other surprise, that maybe shouldn’t have been, was how light it was and how little insulation wrapped it. (pics1,2,3, and 4 below)

The dorm fridge replacing the old unit would be considerably heavier. We did not want it to just hang in the hole as the original had done, so like most old boat projects, the simple quickly became more complicated. We would have to build a support base for it.

30 years of hull grunge and odd wires to nowhere were exposed when we pulled out the old unit. We would have to clean and prep this area well to fasten in supports.(pics 5, 6, and 7)

Next we measured and cut a thin base strip of marine plywood, about an eighth inch thick and inch and a half wide. This would help disperse the load and make the larger vertical board much easier to attach to the hull. We sanded the interior hull where the base strip would go and scrubbed it several times with acetone to help the adhesion of the epoxy. We used flexible dowels to push against the base strip and help hold it in place with pressure once we applied the epoxy. (pics 8 and 9)

Epoxy jobs in small tight areas can be tricky. We used trash bags held down with duct tape boarders to drop cloth the area. It’s important to have everything you need within reach before you start mixing epoxy, including gloves, stir sticks, a can to mix in, cleaning supplies, and a trash box or something similar. You don’t want to have to look for paper towels once your hands already need them: you don’t want to have to decide where your going to set your sticky mix can while you’re standing there holding it with sticky fingers. (pic 10)

You also need to have whatever system you intend to use for holding the wood strips against the hull ready to go before you start spreading epoxy. The nice thing about using flexed dowels is they don’t require much surface area against the strips, unlike using weighted objects that may end up glued into the hull themselves unless you are very careful.

Actual mixing and spreading of the epoxy is the simple part. I use West system just because it has been around long enough for me to know 25 years from now it will still be holding strong, because jobs I did 25 years ago are still holding strong. 

Once the strips are glued into place you should wait until the epoxy is 100% cured before removing the holding dowels. We then added a light piece of mat saturated with epoxy and let that cure before going to the next step.

With the base strip set the next procedure was to make a template for the vertical support. I like to use stiff and light cardboard roughly cut and oversized. Then with it in approximate position I mark and trim it to make a decent pattern. For our design I had to make the top of the vertical support just a little short of the top of the fridge opening to allow for longitudinal strips to run from the opening to rest on top of the vertical support. We used CVX wolmanized plywood for all the structural components from here on. There is always debate in my boat repair circle on the use of this material in boat work. My philosophy is that any material good enough to be buried in the wet ground for basement construction with a 50 year guarantee is as good if not better than marine plywood. But the stuff sure isn’t pretty, so I only use it in areas where I want strength and support, but will not show.   (pic 11)

With the card board template as close as I can gestimate we cut the vertical support and epoxied it in place. Once it was cured I wanted to run longitudinal supports from the lip of the fiberglass opening to the vertical board. But before that could be done the lip itself needed some strengthening. We glued and screwed another thin strip of CVX just under the lip of the opening so our longitudinal strips could rest on it. We then fastened these longitudinal strips from that lip to the vertical board by light epoxy and stainless steel corner brackets. Then we laid another strip on them like a slat that went flush from the fridge opening, over our vertical support, and ran all the way to the bulkhead aft. These slats had to be wide enough to accommodate the feet of the dorm fridge, but I wanted everything as open as possible under and around the fridge for ventilation and accessibility.(pics 12,13, and 14)

We test fitted the dorm fridge and everything lined up well. The feet adjusted for a little bit of leveling, but level on a boat in the water is a relative term. Still, we put the bubble in the middle before securing the fridge. It rested pretty solidly in place, and I knew the final trim would hold it even more, but for heavy seas a simple set screw and stainless steel corner bracket from the fridge base to slat gives piece of mind the unit is not going to shift or slide.

The last step was the easiest. We selected light trim boards, cut them to fit snug around the unit, then stained to match the surrounding wood work. We used the original ice box flange screw holes to fasten the trim. It looked so nice I felt bad I bought a used and slightly scratched fridge.($20 on craigslist). But a fridge magnet provides some cover up. 

My total cost of this upgrade, not counting things I had like epoxy, scraps of  marine plywood, and CVX, was about $50.

One concern I had was that the frequent movement of the fridge after long cruises or heavy seas would hurt it. On full size units I had always heard that you want to let them settle for 24 hrs after moving before plugging in, and that you never want to move a used fridge by setting it on its side. But our little dorm fridge has performed admirably for several seasons. It is turned on whenever shore power is on and neither long passages, nor seas that have cleared the dish racks have affected it. It gets cold fast, and holds ice surprisingly well underway.

It isn’t as good an icebox as deep top loaders I’ve had on other boats. But it’s a heck of a lot better than what this boat came with, and a fridge and freezer at the dock has been a very nice upgrade.