I Spend My Summers Sailing and Won’t Leave the Dock Without This Igloo Cooler

Despite what marketing might have you believe, the best cooler doesn’t have to be the most expensive or the snazziest. Much of what makes me favor one cooler over another—and determines how well and for how long it performs its job—depends on how its design fits my needs and how I pack it. So, I own several for day trips and multiweek adventures, for keeping milk cold and vegetables crisp while driving them home on 100-degree days, and for transporting dinner fixings from my house to a lakeside grill.

My most essential cooler is a heavily used prior generation of the Igloo Marine Ultra 52-Quart Cooler. If I had to choose only one cooler, this would be it. It might be oversized for a day trip or grocery run, but none of my other coolers can hold everything I need for weeks of coastal sailing or keep the black cod and scallops I buy from coastal fishing families frozen on the 600-mile drive home.

My Favorite Cooler: Igloo Marine Ultra 52-Quart Cooler

Igloo has been making its Marine cooler collection since 1967—and coolers in general for another 20 years before that. I think the 52-quart cooler is one of its most versatile and affordable, though it’s also available in eight other sizes ranging from 25 quarts to 150 quarts. There are fancier coolers out there, from Igloo and other companies, but many come with a designer price for minimal chilling improvements.

The current rendition of my Marine cooler has a few features to tout—like UV protection and nonslip handles that help you keep your grip even when it’s wet. But ultimately, this is a well-insulated box that I can pack to the brim with a mix of containers, bottles, jars, and bags of food.

The cooler only weighs about 10 pounds when empty, so I can still handle it when it's fully loaded. I wouldn’t want to carry it far when packed, but I can slide it out of the car, lift it onto a dock cart to pull down to the boat slip, and scooch it around once loaded into the V berth.

When my husband and I are on a multiweek sailing trip, we don’t just eat, we feast—even if it is in the open cockpit of a 25-foot 1978 sailboat and off melamine dinnerware. I pack this cooler like it’s my refrigerator at home, loading it with fresh vegetables and fruit, home-smoked cheese and fish, pickled eggs, yogurt, and an array of homemade condiments.

We start the trip with frozen ingredients like balls of sourdough pizza dough, which help to keep the cooler’s temperature down for the first couple of days. As we eat down our prepacked stash, fresh finds like locally caught shrimp, salmon, and foraged mushrooms slip into the cooler until our next meal.

Depending on the weather and how often we rifle through the cooler, a couple of frozen gallon jugs of fresh water can keep our meal fixings cold for up to a week—and prechilling the cooler helps maximize that window. I then add the jugs to our drinking water supply and pick up bagged ice in the next marina to keep the cooler’s contents chilled for our final days.

As the wind picks up and the boat heels over with the rail in the water, the Marine cooler might slide around a bit, but I’ve never had a broken jar or the lid burst open. That’s partly thanks to the one upgrade we’ve made: an Unhinged Solutions Unbreakable Igloo Cooler Replacement Latch made from repurposed fire hose material. Take off the existing clasp, and this clever design snaps over the cooler’s latch button without the risk of it breaking off, cracking, or popping free. The company also makes hinges for Igloo and Coleman coolers, and a kit with universal straps to help prop open the lid.

When not acting as my onboard refrigerator, the Marine cooler becomes my mobile farmstand as I deliver homegrown vegetables to friends and family. It transports gallons of milk to a cheese-making workshop or refrigerated ingredients to catering gigs. Every time I return home, a quick soapy wipe down, rinse, and air dry have it ready for the next adventure.

Other Coolers Worth Considering

While the Igloo Marine Ultra 52-Quart Cooler has become the onboard refrigerator for my sailboat, I regularly grab a few other models for different situations—such as bulk grocery shopping and lakeside picnics.

Coleman 50-Quart Xtreme 5 Cooler

This is the larger version of the Coleman 28-Quart Xtreme 3 Cooler, which I keep strapped down in the hatchback of my Subaru from the time outdoor temperatures rise above freezing until the first hard frost in fall. Tossing a single ice pack into it keeps my groceries cold while I run errands around town. It also keeps freshly harvested vegetables crisp as I finish plucking weeds and drive the 14 miles from where I garden to my kitchen.

This cooler is large enough to hold what we’ll eat for a few days of front-country camping or lake cruising and acts as our deep cooler on longer sailing trips: When heavily iced and sealed, its contents stay fridge-cold well into the second week, giving us home-prepped meals on our return passage. It’s handled years of jostling in rough waters and over bumpy roads with only cosmetic damage to the outer shell.

Yeti Tundra 65 Hard Cooler

Yeti’s hard coolers are popular in our sailing community, and it’s easy to see why. Their rotomolded shells are made of the same material as the sit-on-top, it-can-handle-anything kayak that we tow as a tender when cruising in waters home to curious sea lions and breaching orcas. This makes these coolers highly durable and insulated, ready to withstand stormy weather and hours baking in the hot sun.

They’re infamously expensive but also incredibly heavy. When it’s time to lift a fully packed Yeti Tundra 65 or larger cooler from the back of a car or onto a boat, I need at least one buddy with a strong back. Once the cooler’s on board, it hogs the boat’s companionway. This has the advantage of acting as a platform that an adult can stand on to haul in a spinnaker and kids can clamber on as they play below deck, but it becomes an obstacle when Mom wants to use the head. If you're looking for something smaller, check out the Yeti Tundra 35.

CleverMade Eco Pacifica 30-Can Collapsible Cooler

When packing dinner for a lakeside picnic, outdoor concert, or beach bonfire, I almost always grab a soft-sided cooler. I'm especially a fan of this tote-style cooler. The flexible exterior bulges without ripping if a mixing bowl is slightly too wide or a margarita mix bottle is a nudge too tall. The 30-can size of CleverMade’s Eco Pacifica Collapsible Cooler holds a full premade meal and beverages for four or the ingredients to assemble a dinner on-site for even more guests. The option to carry it in one hand or over my shoulder leaves my other hand free for a picnic basket with tableware.

I chose this design over a similar CleverMade model because it has thicker insulation and upgraded zippers. The sister style, the Tahoe, comes in more patterns and colors. Both are made with recycled materials and intentionally fold flat for storage, rather than just squishing down and hoping none of the framing cracks.

Dometic CFX3 55IM Powered Cooler + Icemaker

The Dometic Powered Cooler takes road-tripping to a new level. My sister’s family invested in one for their summerlong cross-country tour, installing it in the back of their Jeep and using it as their primary food storage for 11,675 miles. It was a vast improvement over the icebox built into the 1980-era tent trailer they pulled for the journey.

Powered by AC, DC, or solar, this cooler runs off of the vehicle’s battery without draining it on driving days and stays cold with the help of solar panels on in-camp and hiking days. It worked so well that when the family stopped at my house, they kept their supplies in the unit instead of shifting them to my refrigerator.

The Dometic line carries a high price tag, so you would likely only buy one if planning an epic trip. But once owned, it has uses beyond van life. It can replace ice-packed coolers on shorter adventures or tailgating cookouts or plug into a wall socket for a small backyard party.

Why Take Our Word for It?

Julie Laing has been a writer and editor for 25-plus years, focusing on original recipes, kitchen tools, and the stories around them. She is the author of “The Complete Guide to Pickling,” the Flathead Beacon food columnist, and a reviewer and recipe developer for numerous other publications. Julie refuses to live off ramen and hot dogs when camping or cruising, so she’s learned how to pack and organize coolers in ways that let her fix fresh meals days into a trip. When not traveling, she takes most of her summer dinners by cooler to the lake where she and her husband keep their sailboat, The Blue Mule.