Our boat has a small cooler style refrigeration. It’s 40~something Litters so small. And we don’t have a freezer.

One of the key ways to keep cool is to have ice in your drink and to make it clink. Well, that and air conditioning which will be many years before we have.

SO this winter I purchased the “Cruiser’s Icemaker” and it’s the one I’ve seen most often on other cruising sailboats. We ordered a refurbished GE Opal Ice Maker. It makes the tiny crunchy ice that’s perfect for filling in your glass and chomping on when you’re feeling a bit too hot.

The next thing we did was we to strap the unit down with a solid set of straps originally intended to strap down a battery box and they worked wonderfully, on our last overnight we were toss around and the ice maker never moved. We will however be purchasing a baby lock to lock the ice tray into the unit when we are offshore that came precariously close to jumping out and smashing on the floor.

One sad discovery though was that our 500 watt Victron Inverter isn’t strong enough to run the ice maker. I was tempted to buy the 1000 watt unit and wish I had but until we upgrade we’ll make due. And honestly I want to get a generator this summer anyway so I think worst case scenario is we spark up the generator, make some ice, and turn it off. My goal is to not need the generator but if the periodic running and testing to make sure it works is just to make ice… I’m okay with that.