Here is the genius bit of craftmanship you have been wondering about. I hate to put these photos up, and make Ebb's work look so, well, unfinished, but here we go...

"Technical discussion" follows the photos...

Here's the new box -



and here's a slightly different perspective which shows its size better, and how it sits in relation to the rest of the interior -



here with the lid open -



and last, looking down inside -



I made the box simply and easily, because I knew I'd probably be remaking the box. I will be remaking it (a bit smaller), but I also made it functional since, as a liveaboard, I need to be able to keep the bee... um, soda (yeah, that's it, "soda") cold, along with cold cuts and bread, etc..., so it is a "working" prototype.

I used 1" thick sheet foam from a hardware store, and a radiant heat barrier material sandwiched between the outermost layer of foam and the 2nd layer. The 3rd, innermost layer of foam I added a week after the rest, after testing out to see how well just 2" of foam did. 3" works *much* better, so I may even go to 4" in the final version. The construction is simple - I cut the foam with a blade, and staggered the corner joints, sealing them with good old duct tape at every layer. I did not get too involved in the lid; the final version will have more than 1" of foam. For now, I am using a "floating inner lid" of 1" foam and some of the radiant barrier, placing it directly on top of the foodstuffs inside. I'm using the large (approx. 9" square, 1.5" thick) refreezable blue ice substitute thingamajingers, and am getting 4 days of cold from 2 of them inside the box. This is much less volume than a bag of ice, I'd probably get more time using an 8# bag of ice, but thats expensive sorta (although less so than it was, since the extra foam gives the box longer legs...).

I will do a drawing with the dimensions on it, and post that later (in a few days).