Not cooking on gas

We decided early on to remove the gas installation from Marelle. Tony Head, our surveyor, had warned against using the hot water heater until we had got it checked over properly, and Martin and I are both wary of using gas on boats - especially classic boats with deep bilges - due to the risk of a leak causing an explosion. Marelle did have a reasonable installation with a couple of gas alarm sensors, and flame failure cut offs on the burners on the Plastimo cooker as she had been coded for sail training. Even so, for peace of mind and to free up space on the aft deck, we went ahead and removed the gas bottle locker in April.

Taylors 030 cooker

Looking at alternative cookers highlighted that Marelle seems to have the smallest cooker available installed - and with only just enough room for that! She originally had a Taylors 029 cooker, looking at her build plans, which is the 2 burner model with a warming oven. We both love the look of the Taylors cookers, but since they were bought by Blakes Lavac the prices are sky high for either new cookers or for parts. We were outbid on a second hand Taylors 030 on eBay, and in the end picked up an all brass Taylors 029 at Beaulieu boat jumble. In theory we should be able to run both the cooker and the Taylors heater already on Marelle from one paraffin tank. We have read about other installations that use two tanks, with a valve in between, so that one tank can be in the cockpit for easier filling, and the other inside the boat. This sounds like a good way of doing things.

While we were looking for Taylors cookers, I came across a German website hytta.de selling ex army Swedish Optimus cookers and spares at very reasonable prices. Optimus are the makers of the burners that Taylors use, and the Optimus 155 two burner self contained cooker seemed like a bargain at £185.10 including postage. The other advantage of this is that being self contained we could test the burners for the heater at home before refitting them on the boat, and in fact see if we could get used to lighting pressurised paraffin before committing a lot of money to a Taylors.

Optimus 155W cooker

The Optimus, being army kit I suppose, is not as good looking as the Taylors but is robust and straightforward to use.

We tried out the Optimus in the carport at home. There are two methods of pre-heating the burners - either by burning a small quantity of meths below the burner, or playing a blow torch over the burner legs for a minute or so. Some people say the blowtorch is better in a sea as there is a possibility that the meths could spill.

The meths worked fine, we let it burn for a couple of minutes till it had nearly used up the meths and then switched to the paraffin, which lit with a nice blue flame. Encouraged by this, we tried the blowtorch on the other burner. Instead of a nice controlled blue flame, we got yellow flames, and lots of them, as basically we hadn't used the blowtorch for long enough and the burner wasn't hot enough to vapourise the paraffin. The paraffin was coming out in liquid form, and burning with yellow flames shooting up a couple of feet above the cooker - not good! Switching it off at the control for the burner made no difference. We carefully released the pressure valve on the tank and waited at a safe distance for the flames to go out.

Origo 3000 cooker

Although we knew what had happened, this experience made us a bit cautious of having a paraffin cooker on board - we knew we could probably get used to it but we weren't sure if guests would be happy with it. On Sarila, we had used an Origo unpressurised alcohol cooker and been very pleased with it, so we decided to get one of these. Some people don't like alcohol cookers as if you burn meths in them it doesn't smell very nice, and it is hard to get industrial denatured alcohol in this country. However we have found a supplier of it in Lymington. Burning industrial denatured alcohol only smells a little, and the smell is like the alcohol hand cleaner you find in hospitals, so not unpleasant at all. Since it is unpressurised it is very safe and easy to use - to refill, the wadding containers are removed completely from the cooker and the alcohol poured in to them, then replaced in the cooker. The only minor issue we have had is that the alcohol can evaporate from the wadding when the cooker is not in use, if you forget to put the covers on the burners. Alcohol burns slightly cooler than gas, but we have not found this to be a problem - it takes I suppose, a couple more minutes to boil a kettle but on the boat we don't tend to be in a hurry.

Curiously, the cheapest source we found for the Origo cooker was again in Germany - www.hammerkauf.de - even including the postage they were between £40 and £70 cheaper than chandleries in the UK. Hammerkauf were very efficient and the cooker arrived in less than a week, in perfect condition.

We now have three cookers that won't fit on Marelle without some modifications to the galley, and one cooker (the original gas one) on board Marelle, that is disconnected...

Update June 2012:

Make that four cookers... finally got a second hand Taylors 030L on ebay, which is the biggest cooker that Taylors make. It will be fabulous when it is installed, but it is considerably bigger than the current cooker. Martin is keen to redo the galley cupboards and the wood that divides the saloon and the galley as well, as it is currently cheap stained plywood and does not look very good. A daunting prospect, redoing the whole galley, but exciting to plan. So now I am looking for pictures of other classic yachts' galleys for inspiration. We don't have a great deal of space to play with, but this just means we need to be cleverer with the design so we can fit everything in.