Fitting a spirit stove

Garry Flashman swaps gas for meths to make cooking and a cuppa much safer, easier and cheaper on his replica Nobby

- Garry Flashman

It fits! Time to make myself a celebratory cuppa

Some years ago I was working on my boat, ashore in the yard. I felt, rather than heard, the explosion and by the time I'd scrambled the few yards to the mooring pontoon I was confronted with what was left of a Westerly Centaur. The whole deck assembly, including the mast and spars, had been blown the height of a three-story building before landing back on top of the remains of the hull.

There had been one person on board and of course he was rushed to hospital, fortunately with relatively minor injuries. It seems that having been at the centre of the explosion the shock wave rushed away from him.

The experience left me with a permanent concern about explosives in boats. As most skippers are aware, gas and petrol fumes are heavier than air and will sink into the bilge from where there is nowhere to go. The resulting mixture of gas and air is of course highly explosive and can only be cleared by pumping, and then only if you are lucky.

When we bought Freda one of the first jobs was to have the gas installation checked. The engineer made a few changes before signing it off, and of course we had it checked every couple of years after that. Nonetheless we were increasingly uncomfortable with having gas on board, to say nothing of the cost of the stuff.

Just for fun compare the cost of a cylinder of Calor gas with a tank of petrol, bearing in mind that petrol is taxed.

A litre of meths lasts 41/2 hours non-stop use

As with most boats, on Freda gas was used solely for cooking. The only alternative fuels were paraffin or meths, and in the distant past have come close to setting a boat on fire trying to light a paraffin cooker.

We took a closer look at meths (denatured spirit if you want to be pedantic). The people we met who used it were perfectly happy with meths so we did more research.