Now that we are about half way through our passage, I was able to bring all of the food we had placed in our portable freezer up to our main unit and shut the portable unit down. This is a milestone on each long passage. We bought this portable Engel Refrigerator/Freezer as a back-up to out main units, because it has both a refrigerator or freezer function and its very energy efficient. This allows us a back-up to whichever cooling unit might go out and we have a means to save most of our food if it breaks down at an inconvenient time. It can run on either 110V or 12V so that gives us some flexibility too. We have used it in refrigerator mode when we were having our galley worked on so that the service guys didn't need to worry about contaminating our food. We set up a mini galley with a microwave and this fridge in Colin's workshop and prepared our meals there since the oven and stove top were out of commission anyways. It is also nice in the fridge mode for when you are leaving the boat for extended periods. You can keep all your salad dressings, condiments, and other such long use items (waste not want not) and shut the big guys down to conserve energy. But my favorite use for this bad boy has been as extended freezer space on these long passages. It allows me to get more meat, frozen vegies, and even bread (or baguettes in French Polynesia's case) and allows us to have tastier, healthier meals all through the passage. Fresh vegies are still a challenge, because of limited fridge space, but they tend to have a 1-2 week limit anyways, so I opt to use it as a freezer. Its kind of like the old fridge we use to have in the garage back home. We use to use it for over flow, or special events. I guess I need to put this in the "nice-to-have" versus "must-have" category, but on Bangorang it is an appreciated piece of equipment.