Cooker

ghostlymoron

ghostlymoron

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On my new little boat I have a space for a cooker where there was once a single burner gimballed Gaz unit with the bottle hanging below it. Any suggestions for what I should replace it with. Kettle boiling, one pot meals and ideally toast. Must be gimballable for use at sea.
 
ghostlymoron said:
On my new little boat I have a space for a cooker where there was once a single burner gimballed Gaz unit with the bottle hanging below it. Any suggestions for what I should replace it with. Kettle boiling, one pot meals and ideally toast. Must be gimballable for use at sea.
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1st question, have you a place to use as a dedicated gas locker which can be arranged to drain overboard only? One end of a cockpit locker for example? If so, just use a one ring propane cooker. If not, tricky. Meths doesn't give out much heat, you could use paraffin, expensive stove to buy but safe and the stoves hold their value for ever.
But making a gas locker would be worth some trouble..
 
I found it very difficult.
I wanted two burners and grill to replace similar, but not gimballed.

Wanted a marine one really in order to be stainless and rust proof and have full flame failure on all burners. Those I could find were too large to fit the space and too expensive. Would have dug deep if the Plastimo one would have fitted.

Ended up with a cheap camping stove which I had to remove the wind shields from, has no flame failure devices and rusted quicker than you can say ,"salt water".

Id suggest you don't bother with gimbals. We always kept the cooker fixed, not swinging, in the Berwick even offshore. Fiddle rail kept the pans on the hob added by a length of stainless steel (or Monel) wire if necessary

You might have to consider the same arrangement as before but that means the gas bottle is indoors with you.

Otherwise look at the Origo spirit stoves. Not my choice but some people like them.

Sorry not very helpful. One smart ass on here told me there were plenty to choose from. I asked for suggestions. Still waiting two years later.
 
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ghostlymoron said:
On my new little boat I have a space for a cooker where there was once a single burner gimballed Gaz unit with the bottle hanging below it. Any suggestions for what I should replace it with. Kettle boiling, one pot meals and ideally toast. Must be gimballable for use at sea.
Click to expand...

On my boat design - Anderson 22 - and no doubt a lot of others in the 1970's, they used a gas bottle directly fitted to and hung underneath the cooker as a ballast weight to aid gymballing - which by the way I find essential for coastal or offshore sailing, along with pan clamps.

These cookers with a bottle right underneath were a disaster waiting to happen, and I believe are now illegal; ask insurers and they'll probably beat the marathon record !

See the thread running on gas installations here; ' Flexible Gas Hose '.
 
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VicS said:
Sorry not very helpful. One smart ass on here told me there were plenty to choose from. I asked for suggestions. Still waiting two years later.
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I can't think of any single burner ones except Origo (meths), Optimus (paraffin - are they still made?) and the ubiquitous camping type with a small horizontal cylinder. There are also lots of camping stoves which would need mountings for more fixed use in a boat. I agree - "plenty" is not the word.
 
Seajet said:
On my boat design - Anderson 22 - and no doubt a lot of others in the 1970's, they used a gas bottle directly fitted to and hung underneath the cooker as a ballast weight to aid gymballing - which by the way I find essential for coastal or offshore sailing, along with pan clamps.

These cookers with a bottle right underneath were a disaster waiting to happen, and I believe are now illegal; ask insurers and they'll probably beat the marathon record !

See the thread running on gas installations.
Click to expand...
I would suspect that one would need a Gas Safe engineer to even change the cylinder & test cert after :encouragement:
 
At SWMBO's it's an all electric village between Midhusrt and Petworth, West Sussex; the electrical supply is shockingly bad, not just in gales but all the time; she once had the power off for 6 weeks and resorted to cooking on a cauldron over the open fire, ' hubble bubble toil and trouble ' so I made a car sticker for her, ' My other car's a broomstick ' which she quite liked.

In the recent storms the neighborhood watch actually sent an e-mail ' expect your power to quit any time from 18:00 on ' so Anne dragged out the camping Gaz stove, only to find we needed a bottle; after a bit of a trek in the worst of the Wednesday storm we got a new 907 bottle - £55 for the bottle and £24 for the gas, ouch !

Still we did have the power off from 22:45 to 11:30 the next morning and made hot drinks & soup not knowing when the power might return, so at least felt better about the investment.
 
Ghostlymoron,

if you are going to stick to inshore sailing I agree; most coastal sailors like me spend much less time cooking on the boat nowadays - remember Vesta meals, and the later reply pot noodles ?! :(

I do think any boat going to sea properly should have the cooker gymballed with pan clamps, if it has a cooker at all;some boats at boat shows have unsecured cookers plonked on a platform, which is spiffing at Excel boat shows for SWMBO but not of any use or positively dangerous in any even slight waves.

Now most pubs offer decent meals, and breakfasts at places used to yotties, the cooker on the boat is almost becoming the emergency Plan B.

As a backup have a look at Amazon ' self heating meals ', relatively dear but good to carry as a backup when things get lumpy and yourself and the crew have to be sustained.

If going offshore even a bit from place to place, one needs a decent gymballed cooker - and provisions to suit - to keep morale & sustain the crew, or in case the Plan A doesn't work out and one spends longer at sea than imagined; I remember returning to the Solent as a youngster after a holiday with only cornflakes and water...:rolleyes:
 
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Seajet said:
These cookers with a bottle right underneath were a disaster waiting to happen, and I believe are now illegal; ask insurers and they'll probably beat the marathon record !
Click to expand...

Plenty of them were used without accident and maybe they were not as unsafe as you think. No hoses to deteriorate or get damaged. No unions to leak. See at a glance whether it's on or off.

The 'Lord Trenchard' had a gas installation that ticked all the boxes and was thought to be safe but the boat was destroyed and a man lost his leg when it blew up.
 
parsifal said:
Plenty of them were used without accident and maybe they were not as unsafe as you think. No hoses to deteriorate or get damaged. No unions to leak. See at a glance whether it's on or off.

The 'Lord Trenchard' had a gas installation that ticked all the boxes and was thought to be safe but the boat was destroyed and a man lost his leg when it blew up.
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+1

Gas needs a modicum of sense, but so does anything that uses an inflammable fuel.

I'd prefer a remote bottle in a proper gas locker, but if that isn't practicable, I wouldn't lose any sleep over a bottle attached to the cooker. I would have a gas detector somewhere nearby, though, and I'd change bottles outside. It was a long time ago and maybe they're better designed now, but I've seen the ball pop out of a gaz bottle. It didn't take long for the bottle to empty itself, but it did take a while for the gas to disperse to the point where we felt safe to light up.
 
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parsifal said:
Plenty of them were used without accident and maybe they were not as unsafe as you think. No hoses to deteriorate or get damaged. No unions to leak. See at a glance whether it's on or off.

The 'Lord Trenchard' had a gas installation that ticked all the boxes and was thought to be safe but the boat was destroyed and a man lost his leg when it blew up.
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Was it not a poorly fitted or poorly supervised bottle change. Most of us are well us to bottle changes as we sail our own boats & would never ever allow a crew to do it
 
parsifal said:
Plenty of them were used without accident and maybe they were not as unsafe as you think. No hoses to deteriorate or get damaged. No unions to leak. See at a glance whether it's on or off.

The 'Lord Trenchard' had a gas installation that ticked all the boxes and was thought to be safe but the boat was destroyed and a man lost his leg when it blew up.
Click to expand...

What's the first thing to go for with a gas problem; the regulator tap.

What's the thing you certainly can't reach and maybe feeds gas direct at high pressure to a fire ? A regulator tap on a gas bottle hung under the cooker...

Feel free to try it chum ! :rolleyes:
 
nigelmercier said:
I guess it depends what sort of sailing you do. When we were on the same tack for two days and two nights, the gimbals were quite handy.
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Occasionally released it to swing on ts gimbals I suppose but very rarely and even then more often than not locked it again. Perhaps we didn't do a lot of serious cooking in bad weather ... esp when there were just the two of us and I was cook. The Op seemed more interested in being able to boil the kettle than cooking roast dinners. Certainly no need for gimbals just to boil a kettle.

Not sure how he will do toast . That was the main reason I wanted one with a decent grill. The one I bought has grill but I'd not call it decent. Dunno why but a lot of the cheaper LPG cooker grills seem to be pants.
 
VicS said:
Not sure how he will do toast . That was the main reason I wanted one with a decent grill. The one I bought has grill but I'd not call it decent. Dunno why but a lot of the cheaper LPG cooker grills seem to be pants.
Click to expand...

For toast, the best solution on a camping/boat cooker is one like this that goes on top. Just time to butter and eat one slice as the next one cooks.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gelert-CUT118-Folding-Camping-Toaster/dp/B000QH2V40/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
 
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