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

Over the years I have had a number of stoves. The Coleman in both white gas and propane were very good. An Optimus pressure alcohol stove was an accident waiting to happen. Our two burner Origo stove was excellent but when we had it we had difficulty finding alcohol outside of North America and during one cruise pretty well had to quit cooking when we had only one gallon left for three months of travel.  Thought rum might work but never gave it a try. Traded the Origo for a fisherman's anchor that we get more use from.The past eight years have been with a Taylors and the parts are expensive and getting harder to find. We have a store of parts for a number of years to come and find getting fuel not to be a problem at all. We have used kerosene, Jet A and minerla spirits with no problems. We do enjoy the oven and use it regularly. The stove is not gimballed but is located close to the roll centre (thanks Paul) so cooking is not a great challenge in most weather conditions. The oven racks are adjustable to compensate for the heel of the boat and more than once Kathy has asked to go on the other tack so she could bake easier. I have found some really interesting alcohol inserts at http://www.marinestove.com/Accessories.htm that will likely fit in the burner holes in the casting when the day comes that we need to make a choice of stoves again.

I have a two burner Maxie that friends gave me when they upgraded. I had always heard that they were slow but I find it works just fine. As for the gimbaling I find if the tank is not near full it's fairly useless. I put Nyloc nuts on gimbal bolts and just tighten them up a bit to take the swing out of  it.