David Thatcher wrote:

My last four boats have been equipped with LPG stoves and based on my experiences of the last 20 years with these stoves, LPG would always be the fuel of choice for me. LPG is generally readily available at very reasonable prices. If the installation of the pipes is done correctly with the proper connectors then leakage of fuel into the boat should not occur. Any proper marine gas stove should be fitted with automatic shut off at the burners so should the flame go out the gas will not continue to flow. I have an American Force 10 stove which is now almost 20 years old but still in excellent condition. On Footprints our gas is stored in two 4.5kg alloy bottles which are easy to handle and easy to stow and cost less than NZ$20 to fill. We also find that one bottle of gas lasts a very long time. On our cruise to New Caledonia in 2013 I knew that LPG was very difficult to obtain in that particular country. So I took along our two 4.5kg bottles and an extra 9kg bottle of gas to hopefully see us through the three months of cruising. On our return to New Zealand at the end of the 3 months one of the 4.5kg bottles was untouched.

I don't like the fact that the Powers That Be can interfere with my cooker arrangement in NZ.  I don't like the bottles running out when I'm cooking.  I don't like the fact that even a 4.5 kg bottle is quite a lump to lug into and out of a dinghy and carry to a filling station when I'm cruising, to say nothing of the difficulty of finding somewhere to fill the bottles in the first place.  I can think of no anchorage, offhand, that is in easy walking distance of a place that would top up my bottles for me.  It would be different if I had a home base and access to a car.  However, I'm planning for self-sufficiency, and liquid fuel from the handy 4-Square store seems the best bet for me.

Annie Hill wrote:

 

There is no way I'm going with gas on SibLim.  Quite apart from the fact that it always runs out when you are cooking for guests, the bottles are big and awkward to handle, I have to have good access to somewhere where I can get them refilled and gas is still not a particularly safe fuel to use.

 

I have been following this discussion and it seems that there are a number of problems involved in using alcohol or kerosene stoves, including the quality of the stoves and availability of quality fuel at reasonable prices. Throughout my boating life I have used pressurised alcohol and kero stoves, and unpressurised alcohol. I have experienced all sorts of problems with burners for these stoves and have had some good flare ups, and lingering fumes from the fuel.

My last four boats have been equipped with LPG stoves and based on my experiences of the last 20 years with these stoves, LPG would always be the fuel of choice for me. LPG is generally readily available at very reasonable prices. If the installation of the pipes is done correctly with the proper connectors then leakage of fuel into the boat should not occur. Any proper marine gas stove should be fitted with automatic shut off at the burners so should the flame go out the gas will not continue to flow. I have an American Force 10 stove which is now almost 20 years old but still in excellent condition. On Footprints our gas is stored in two 4.5kg alloy bottles which are easy to handle and easy to stow and cost less than NZ$20 to fill. We also find that one bottle of gas lasts a very long time. On our cruise to New Caledonia in 2013 I knew that LPG was very difficult to obtain in that particular country. So I took along our two 4.5kg bottles and an extra 9kg bottle of gas to hopefully see us through the three months of cruising. On our return to New Zealand at the end of the 3 months one of the 4.5kg bottles was untouched.

Of note also is that stove on Footprints is ungimbaled and sits athwartships. We have proper potholders to hold pots, or the kettle in place and we have found this to be a very satisfactory arrangement even for cooking on an ocean passage, and does away with the need for the complication and space robbing gimbaled installation of a boat stove. 

I agree that the design of marine alcohol cookers has got some catching up to do, now that the fuel has become both more readily available and cleaner, as a result of two things, I think - 1: the growth of the market in flueless room heaters, and 2: surfing the web, I found several instances of NGOs and non-profits pushing the use of alcohol as a clean-burning cooking fuel for third world countries. However, the design of alcohol burners has been inhibited, I think, by the fact that the designer of the Origo is doing much of the pushing, and has even brought out a simple cheap version of it, called the CleanCook.

At least as far back as the 19th century, there have been whale oil and then kerosene cookers that used a wick and a perforated chimney as a way of introducing jets of fast-moving air into the fuel vapour, ensuring complete combustion. I've seen them relatively recently, in places as widely spaced as Iceland, South Africa and Tonga. These are still made in vast numbers in India, China and some other places, and would work with alcohol, too, with minimal adaptation. There have also been gravity fed versions with the same kind of perforated chimney (but neither version has been suitable for marine use). However, I feel that the first version suffers from the same drawback as the Origo, ie, when not in use, the supply of fuel is not totally closed off, and there is a faint odour of fuel. A good marine cooker needs to have a needle valve, or more expensively, the kind of carburettor that's found on Dickinson and Refleks heaters, to regulate and to totally shut off the fuel. The second version of kerosene cooker has such a needle valve. 

The ideal KISS alcohol burner might be something along the lines of a perforated chimney, on top of a simple cup (probably with some wicking material in it) into which the fuel is controllably delivered. There remains the not entirely trivial problem of designing such a perforated chimney style of alcohol burner that's easy to make, at low cost, with minimal tooling, out of marine grade materials. The rest is straightforward. The fuel can be supplied by either gravity or a low pressure tank, and offshore sailors are aware of how to gimbal a stove properly, and how to keep the pans where they belong when it's rough. 

Patric A wrote:Unfortunately it seems to be more of a browser issue as none of my preferred Android browsers works all that well with Wild Apricot. Might have a look at chrome though.

Edit:

Why wait? Chrome works far better. I'll have to see if I can get used to its little quirks.