The Crosby

A little background info. We have this fridge, an old Crosby unit which pulls 35-40 amps off our inverter to cool beer and cheese. We have more than beer and cheese, it’s just that’s what I seem to keep opening the door for. Anyhow, the “Crosby”, will pull down a 400 amp hr. battery bank, in about 8 hours if you do not re-charge. We try to keep up with it by running the engine to charge the batteries every morning and evening. It’s a pain in the ass, but until we get solar, and a DC fridge, this is what we have to do. Try as we did to keep up, the Crosby kept sucking and sucking, so when the engine starts, the alternator gets overloaded, and the engine v-belt starts to slip. When this happens, the engine room gets a little smokey. We noticed this from time to time, but it always went away after a few minutes. On our way to Camelot we noticed the smoke again. Should we worry? SNAP! Beep Beep Beep! The cooling water alarm went off, and I immediately shut down the engine. We were dead in the water.