Hi some freinds of mine are going on a ferry crossing from Portsmouth to St Malo a crossing of around 11 hours.What is the best way to run their caravan fridge for this duration ?
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Running fridge on ferry crossing
- Thread starter andy_5039827
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I think you may need to run it off our leisure battery, however make sure that you can chaege it on the other side either through your car or a site.
There isn't really a way of running the fridge as 12V would flatten one battery(you could have a bank of them but it would be costly and heavy).Gas would not be allowed on the ferry and I have never seen anyone on mains hook up(you could ask beforehand).You could do as we do and put several cool blocks in the fridge but frozen food would be doubtful
Hello Andy, I think it is very unlikely that you will find any practical method of keeping a caravan fridge working during a ferry crossing. Gas has to be turned off, there is no 2302V available, and teh fridges consumption of 12V will flatten even a big 110Ah battery over 11 hours. Best suggestion is to stock it up well, chill it down as cold as you can before the journey, and dont open the door. You could pre chill some cold blocks in the home freezer and pop them in which may help. If in doubt dont store any meat, but buy it at your destination.
Why not take an empty fridge or with things that don't require to be kept cold all the time, leave the ferry and drive for a couple of hours by which time the fride will be cold and then stop and shop.
The 12v fridge operation is via the car battery through the 12S socket so you would need to arrange a circuit from a leisure battery via a separate lead to the fridge terminals or you could unplug the 12S and have a lead from a leisure battery with a 12S socket and plug into that.If you used the caravan battery it would be depleted when you got to France but would charge up via the alternator if you had a long journey to go.The only major drawback could be if you needed the van electrics immediately on arrival for high current such as a mover.
why, there are shops in france that sell fresh food. from my memory the boat docks at about 07:30 so you have all day. gas is not allowed to be lit on the car deck, battery - well i suppose you could flatten the van batt but what if its on the car batt and the ferry is delayed. my advice is just take some dry and tinned food for a quick meal over there if you can't get any food. as you come out of st malo south there is a large supermarket on the right a few miles out of town with a large car park, cafe and fresh food.
You are not allowed to run the fridge on gas while on board ship and the 12 volt wiring is such that the fridge will only run in this mode with the car's engine running.
We've found that the best thing to do is to get a couple of empty 2 litre milk flagons, fill them with water and freeze them, then place them in strategic points in your fridge making sure that you've chilled your fridge right down from your domestic electricity supply before you set off. We did this for the very long overnight St Malo crossing and the two flagons were still rock hard when we made our first stop two hours after getting off the ferry the next morning. That was a total of nearly 14 hours and they would have lasted much longer.
Vic
We've found that the best thing to do is to get a couple of empty 2 litre milk flagons, fill them with water and freeze them, then place them in strategic points in your fridge making sure that you've chilled your fridge right down from your domestic electricity supply before you set off. We did this for the very long overnight St Malo crossing and the two flagons were still rock hard when we made our first stop two hours after getting off the ferry the next morning. That was a total of nearly 14 hours and they would have lasted much longer.
Vic
We froze as much as possible then put it in the fridge just before we left home. This kept everything else well chilled until we arrived(some of the items were actually still frozen when we got there!).
I have seen two adverts for Avondale vans that I like sound of, a pennine GLX and a pennine XL, both 1996 models, can anyone tell me what differs between them ?
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