The pressurized stoves are nothing to fear as long as treated with respect and reasonably maintained...not unlike the rest of a sailing craft.

Remember, for years and years we were all a-feared of propane in the boat. Even the good 'ol CG insisted that pressurized alcohol was a wonderfully safe alternative. Then, we gotta pick our favorite likely culprit...

---The "boating Public" became infested with people who simply HAD to have all the discomforts of home...

or

---Kenyon-Homestrand was nearly gone broke because the stoves lasted forever.

or

The "boating public" became obsessed with "safety" to a pretty ridiculous extent because the activity itself has been marketed for sale to people with more money than good sense. This may ruffle feathers or sound snotty, and it isn't meant to...but sailing is in and of itself an inherently hazardous activity (so is taking a shower, driving a car, or crossing the street, for that matter). Anyone who is capable of undestanding and respecting the inherent hazards of the water and the forces of nature against rigging, blah blah blah...can probably survive a pressurized stove just fine. Good lord, to hear it told it is a miracle that anyone survived having a gasoline auxiliary! Sheesh. Sold a lot of diesels, though!

To my personal exposure the biggest hazard of a pressurized alcohol stove is that a guy might have to set sail beating a tide change or whatnot before he's had his coffee and pooch it good from lack of alertness...as it would take about 1/2 day or so to perk it (or just boil water) over the alcohol!

For some reason...this is a bit before the time when I really paid attention to "why"...years ago a lot of folks ditched the kero. in favor of the alky. Sheesh.

Well, here we are today all the same, and a nice byproduct of all of this is that there is a great selection of kerosene stoves and cookers at a used marine store near you for very little money. Bulkhead heaters, too.

One of the things that inclined my good wife to be an engineless sailor...is that she gets very nauseous very quickly belowdecks with any sort of petroleum stank going on. While I think it could get costly with a 2-burner cooker, things like old seaswings and bulkhead heaters run very economically, and burn lamp oil just dandy...which doesn't stink like kero/diesel and puts out very little soot.

The alcohol preheat on the burner is easily done in a safe and spill-less manner with a syringe and a little length of plastic tubing, BTW. I'm pretty good at the trick of sticking a match in a hole between two fingers and then yanking 'em back smartly, but since the advent of the aim-n-flame a guy need not even cultivate that skill.

And hey...those old Kero units just look "right" in a good old-school boat like we're fitting out anyway!


Best,
Dave (AKA Mrs. Mary, S/V MANDARA)