Tony & Sally Summers wrote:Annie, the Coleman fold up oven measures, 12 1/4 inches wide, 12 1/4 inches high, and a bare 12 inches from front to back. folded its  12 1/4x 12 1/4 x 2 inches. poor quality tin plate but for the price its ok.    TONY

That will be too big for the Maxie, which has a bare 10" between fiddle rails, front to back. Pity.

Pleased to hear that alcohol is available outside of North America. My negative experiences were some twelve years ago in the Caribbean when I started to carry enough to last an entire cruise. I have not looked for alcohol since changing stoves to kerosene. For preheating the Taylors stove I use a small propane torch that is actually more cost effective than alcohol. Arne's comment on the Optimus burners is substantiated with the most recent spare I purchased as it is an Optimus burner as well.

                                                                   Stavanger, Sunday

This is an interesting thread. Of course the dominating factor (behind safety) when deciding the type of fuel is the availability of fuel and spare parts for the stove. I guess we who generally stay in one country have much less trouble than those of you who sail all over the world.

As for the Taylor stoves, I would be surprised if their burners are not from Optimus. At least the Taylor paraffin heater in Johanna has an Optimus burner (here, at page 3). I just googled Optimus. They seem to have specialised in portable stoves for hikers now, but I also find dealers which still sell the Optimus 155 boat stove ( which sits in Johanna) and also full spare kits to the burners. Their burners are pretty standard kerosene burners with internal cleaning needle and should be easy to fit in any stove. As for fuel, it is funny that kerosene is difficult to get at on some places since the most common jet fuel, JETA1 is kerosene. The problem may be to find a dealer who would sell it by the litres instead of by the tons...

My Johanna came with a 2-burner Origo alcohol stove. However, the alcohol was so expensive (70Nkr/l) and the burners not so powerful, so I gave the Origo to Sebastian in Peregrine (they only pay 10Nkr/l in Germany). Nowadays I can get alcohol for 25kr/l which makes more sense. Still, I like my Optimus 155 (here on Youtobe) and as long as it works well, I’ll keep it. I am less fond of that Taylor heater as so much of its heat output disappears through the chimney and I could anyway not leave it on over night. Now there is a little stainless solid fuel heater from Dickinson sitting on the shelf at my local dealer....

Cheers, Arne

Paul Thompson wrote:

Robert Groves wrote: The stove is not gimballed but is located close to the centre of effort so cooking is not a great challenge in most weather conditions.

Hi Bob,

Unless you have a rather unusual rig or your cooker is a few meters above your deck.... I suspect your cooker is not to near your CE. I think you mean the RC which is the roll centre of the boat and the position of least movement. :-)

Yes that is a better description and the stove still really works well. We couldn't really find a good way to mount the stove with the gimbals this worked very well. I think Annie's stove in Badger was located in pretty well the same place. Made the correction to the wording.

ok Annie will dig the fold up cooker out of the deep locker tomorrow and post the vitals. Meantime, for those having trouble sourcing Taylors parts try John Gardner in Southampton UK   taylorsheatersandcookers.co.uk   TONY