Anonymous wrote:However, the boat environment is one of either fresh ocean air or bouts of air laden with mould spores and I would imagine, very few natural yeasts floating around. That might have an impact.

Once it is going, I don't think the yeast and bacteria in your natural yeast are going to be affected by what is floating around. The only thing I can think of that would harm it is if you used bleach (or some other chemical) to treat your drinking water and used that for feeding your mix. Worth while saving rain water for that as one never knows what might be in water sourced from a marina or other tap water.

Those who have studied these things have been surprised that the species of bacteria and yeast making up the highest numbers in a natural yeast mix are not prevalent in the environment, water or flour used to start the process. As the mix sours, it becomes more habitable for the yeast and bacteria we want and less so for the rest. It really is a magical process, a gift. As happens, the bacteria famous for sour dough bread taste is found in nature at the highest levels... in the human mouth. Yet I know of no one who spits in the natural yeast mix. I think we probably eat lots of the food that bacteria likes.

The other thing that slows down (or may prevent) the formation of wild yeast is spiking the mix with baking yeast as it is the wrong species. I have also had AP flour kill off my mix... if you want white sour dough, use UB (unbleached) but I have had the most success with whole grain (as opposed to whole wheat) flours.

Oh, well done.  I make my bread in my frying pan, but do sometimes miss having an oven.

Slightly off topic - do you think you'll be able to keep your sourdough going on the boat?

Water doesn't burn? Who knew?

Ethanol evaporates about twice as fast as water so an ethanol/water mixture would SLOWLY self dilute.  But if you are starting with >90% ethanol, it would not become an issue for a long , long time.    Evaporation rates are functions of temperature, pressure and surface area.  Maybe if you buy the ethanol by the gallon and have an old, half filled jug sitting around for a season, it might significantly degrade? Otherwise, even a 80/20 mixture should remain portent if kept in any sort of closed container. 

Personally, I never liked alcohol cookers due to the inherent problem of the low energy density of alcohol.  I used to call it the gallon for a gallon rule.  It took a gallon of alcohol to boil a gallon of water (being hyperbolic of course)

There appears to be an element of truth in the burners getting cooler with time.  But only an element.  I have discovered that if I want to cook chips, they cook better over a recently- filled cannister than one filled a day or two previously.  I won't even hazard a guess as to why.

Pol, you are reading the instructions on a cooker, produced in the 21st century in Europe.  If you read the safety instructions on a battery drill, you'd probably never use one of those, either.  We live in a (to put it mildly) risk-averse society!