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..............................................--- A Rack For the Cooler ---
We carry two coolers with us on our trips and they are........................
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.......... stored where they are easy to get to just aft of the starboard seat. One has a split lid and although it doesn't keep ice as long as the other is larger and easier to get into. We usually fill the second one as full of ice as we can and any pre-frozen food we want to stay frozen for a few days and also use dry ice in it if it is available.
The biggest problem we have had is that as soon as you have water in the bottom of the cooler everything seems to migrate into that water and no matter how waterproof the container is that the food is in it seems to always fill with water and become a mess. To help with that problem I made the following rack to go into the front cooler, the one we are into the most. I'll also make one for the other cooler, but it will be quite a bit different as the needs in that cooler are different. When I make that one I'll post it here also.
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Here is the design I came up with and ..................
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............ welded up using................
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.........aluminum from the hardware store. The arrow points to a flat piece that prevents....
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........ ice, especially cubes, form getting over where the two 1/2 gallon milk containers (2% and skim) are located and it locates those containers, so it is easy to pull them in and out with out having to move ice from under where they go.
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On a long trip if we can't re-stock supplies like on our 18 day Lake Powell trip we can carry 4 1/2 gallon containers of milk if we want. That is why there is a space to the left of the vertical divider for two more containers. They are move to the other side when the first two are exhausted. The ice fits to the left of the milk containers and there is room there for one block and also some crushed ice with room for at least a bag plus the block if only two milk containers are in the cooler.
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The shelve can hold various size containers under............
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.........the lid on that side and the whole shelf can be turned end for end in the cooler if we want the milk at the other end.
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Here is a different combination of.............
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..........containers and things like pop and beer can go in the bottom as the ice melts and there is room. We used this so far on a 18 day trip and it worked very well, much better than the mess we always had before.
Check back later to see what I'll do with the other ice chest.