Refrigerator Venting

Our Tug was originally designed for cruising the waters of Alaska. It is used to being in cooler climates and as such there is a small but important design flaw in the way the refrigerator is setup. The vents installed to draw heat out of the back of the fridge just can’t keep up with  heat and humidity of Florida.

We discovered this problem on our last weekend in St. Augustine. The plan was to cook some awesome short ribs in our crock-pot on Super Bowl Sunday during the cruise back to Jacksonville. We had only purchased the Short ribs a few days prior while we were staying in St. Augustine.

As soon as Heather opened the package of short ribs the whole boat filled with the awful stench of  the bad ribs. We had other food on board, but had completely lost our appetite.

Once home I did a little research and discovered others with a similar problem.

I purchased a thermometer so I could monitor the temperature and this is about as cold as the fridge was getting by the middle of the day.

The fix required adding a vent and a small computer fan to draw heat out of the small space behind the fridge.

Once I cut out and installed the vent the fridge began working much more efficiently and kept everything in the safe zone for food. No more creepy meat.