Cook in heaven

Stove Project - six weeks on
The smell of kero is becoming a distant memory, as the new Force 10 stove continues to live up to expectations. Not only is the cook doing all the usual Nahani meat and three veg meals using the stove top, griller and oven, but she is branching out, baking bread, biscuits, even making pancakes in Pancake Creek. Everything cooks more quickly than she expects, so the first round of bread and biscuits are slightly overcooked, but not enough to stop the captain enjoying them. Practice is making perfect. Now we just wonder why we didn't make the change sooner.

Cooking with gas!

Stove Project: New stove "goes live"
Monday 1 August is our last day with our hire car, so we use it to provision the boat. Big supermarket trip, and when we've unloaded and packed the food away, we head down Tedder Avenue for lunch and to the BWS to restock the cellar. Then to Southern Stainless to get a bit of extra welding on the holder for the spare gas bottle, return the hire car, and back to Nahani in time to cook the first proper meal on the new stove. Oh the joy of not having to prime the burners, and no smell of kero. And to the cook's delight, the burners on the Force 10 stove are as fast or faster than the kero burners, and don't go out when turned down low. First meal uses cook top only, using frypan on the large burner and steamer on a small one.
Tuesday, cook uses the griller for the first time. No smoke from burning fat, and four lamb loin chops cook so quickly that she barely has time to get the veg cooked.
Next meal will test out the oven. Can't wait.

Project complete!

Stove Project: Day 13
Another day beavering away getting the boat back to normal. Engineer spends most of the morning continuing to fit extra polystyrene around the refrigerator. Mate helps with putting fridge in, taking fridge out until all new insulation finally fitted and engineer bolts the fridge back in place, and then we refit the side and front panels. There are fragments of polystyrene everywhere, all over the floor, the walls, the engineer. Mate vacuums. And vacuums. Engineer moves on into the bed area, and slaves away again restoring the cedar panelling that was removed. Since it now has a gasline behind it, this requires a degree of modification and adjustment to allow the extra space for the new pipe. Once that's done, mate puts things away in the under-bed hatches, moves the mattress back out of the front cabin into the guest cabin and makes the bed. More vacuuming, removing ever more polystyrene which has spread through the boat. Finally, we tidy up all the tools, bits and pieces that have been used on the project and get them stowed away in their proper places in the "shed" (aka the aft starboard side cabin). We still haven't had time to shop, so it's back to the club for a carvery tea to get the strength for a last tidy up.

Restoration of order begins...

Stove Project: Day 12
After rushing about for 3 days to get all the gasfitting and certification done during the working week, we decide it's time to relax a bit - we laze in the early morning, writing emails, phoning friends. Then we start on the restoration of Nahani to her proper shipshape self. Mate puts all the stuff back in the lazarette hatch while engineer finishes off the galley area. Mate then puts all the stuff back in the galley cupboards. Earlier in the week the huge cookware cupboard was emptied in order to run sensor wires through it, but that lot got put back as soon as the wires were in place. Today it's all the plates back into the plate rack and all the myriad bottles, jars, packets, containers of this and that, that live in the pantry cupboard behind the stove. Much of this has been resident in the small fridge so once it's out, the fridge is filled with more appropriate substances (wine, bubbly, beer) and turned on. Meanwhile the engineer is on the subproject of putting more insulation material around the big fridge, shedding small fragments of polystyrene foam everywhere as he works. No doubt they will gradually spread across the boat and we will be finding them for weeks.

In which we are certified

Stove Project: Day 11
No, not certified insane (although it might happen any time soon). Engineer works all day to complete all the wiring of alarms and sensors. Mate assists as required, but spends most of the time taking advantage of the fact that the mattress is out of the guest cabin to hand sew a large tuck in the cover so that it fits smoothly instead of having to be tucked under by hand during bed-making as has been happening for the last 7 years.
We decide we need to keep the hire car we have for another couple of days so that we can get provisions, but find that the hire people are happy to give us an alternative car, but need ours back. So we have to juggle getting Bryan the gas man back for the final check and certification with doing the car swap. We get the timing all wrong and finish up driving down the coast and back up in Friday night traffic, and poor Bryan has to wait about three quarters of an hour for us to return. But then he gives the whole installation the big tick, and we have the excitement of lighting the stove for the first time (engineer took a break to get the gas bottle filled during his day's work). It looks wonderful. We each make a trip to the ATM to get some cash, pay Bryan and thank him profusely, especially for waiting so long, then return to the chaos. Decide to start on that tomorrow. We have a ceremonial boiling of the kettle as we have nothing else to cook, and after a cup of tea we head to the Yacht Club for fish and chips, then collapse in front of the telly in our jim-jams. Early night.

Flexing

Stove Project: Day 10
We start the day with one more attempt to force a piece of electrical flex up from inside the lazarette up the inside of the jungle gym post to the small hole already drilled for its exit near the gas bottle. After a while we give up and accept that the jungle gym will have to be dismounted, at least on one side, and raised up. This all takes time to undo all the things that hold up or are held up by the jungle gym, then the topping lift is attached to the cross rail for a careful raising, preferably without damaging the newly installed gas pipe, which has been carefully unbolted and moved out of danger. Even with a gap between the exit from the lazarette and the entry into the jungle gym pole visible, it still isn't an easy job, but eventually we succeed, then lower the jungle gym equally carefully back into place, and redo/mount/tie everything that was undone/dismounted/untied. Once the pole is bolted back in place, and while the engineer does the rest, the mate retires below to feed the other end of the flex back from the lazarette into and through the guest cabin. Engineer then removes the panel above the fridge to get the flex through the last section of the guest cabin, then across the top of the galley cupboard and finally to its target, the gas alarm. He gets started on the wiring, including the underfloor sensors, only to find that the instructions for the alarm have gone missing. We ring the manufacturer, who promises to email them, but doesn't, so engineer has to call him for assistance whenever it isn't obvious what to connect to what. Meanwhile, the mate attacks the bird poo problem - while we were in Melbourne it seems some largeish bird trapped itself under the doghouse, flapped about mightily dropping feathers and excrement everywhere before finding its way out again.
The previous day a big Hanse yacht called Coorain berthed opposite and we were greeted by Peter Watson, whom we met sailing his yacht Ankira four years ago. At about 5 he appears to invite us for drinks at 6, by which time the idea seems most welcome. We clean up and join the Coorain skipper Howard and crew where we play the "who do you know that I know" game as we are all from Melbourne and of an age. After several hours and two bottles of red, we adjourn to an Indian restaurant in Tedder Street for a feed. Mate thinks it is a serendipitously pleasant way to spend her birthday.

The Gasman cometh again, and does great work

Stove Project: Day 9
Returning to Nahani on Tuesday evening, we fall into bed after the flight to Coolangatta, picking up a hire car and driving to Southport Yacht Club, where the boat has been for the last month. Bryan the gasman is due in the morning. He hasn't given us a time, so we set the alarm for 7:30, thinking he might arrive around 8am. We are awoken at 7:15 by a call to say he is at the gate! We fling ourselves out of the bunk and into our clothes and the captain goes to let him in. After a very productive morning of Bryan working with assistance from the crew, we have the regulator mounted on the jungle gym pole at the back, the gas line going down through the deck, through the lazarette, into and through the guest cabin, through the cupboard, behind the fridge, through the bulkhead and along the side of the stove cavity, where it attaches to a tap and the stove hose. It isn't quite as elegant at the stove as we were hoping: we planned to have the tap mounted discreetly at the back, but regulations require it to be at the front. At least it will be obvious if we forget to turn it off. To make room for the tap we have to dismount the stove, change the gimbal mountings and remount (that was the exercise that did the engineer's back last time, but we manage it without further injury).
In the afternoon we go out for an overdue lunch, and buy some polystyrene foam - we are taking the opportunity of increasing the insulation round the fridge while it is demounted. The engineer then spends a rather fruitless afternoon trying to poke the wire for the regulator cut-off switch up from the lazarette through the hollow pole of the jungle gym to the exit hole he has drilled, but with no success. The cook, who is suffering from a badly strained foot, lay down on the job and has an afternoon sleep while he toils. Tomorrow we hope to succeed working on the problem together.

Order out of chaos

Stove Project: Day 8
Engineer's back is slowly recovering. Through heroic efforts, he manages to tidy up most of the chaos, storing the content of the galley cupboards in various receptacles, re-mounting the cup and plate racks and restoring their contents, doing the washing, even shifting the old stove off the boat and taking it to the rubbish area. He is then ready to catch his taxi to the Gold Coast airport and fly back to Melbourne, where the cook is waiting to collect him and make sympathetic noises about his back.
And so the great Stove Project goes on hold until we return to the Gold Coast on 26 July. Watch this space.

The Gasman cometh

Stove Project: Day 7
Engineer severely debilitated by back injury from the previous day. But he is up and ready to meet Bryan the gasfitter, who seems to think that the exercise of running the gas line from the rear of the deck down into the lazarette, through the guest cabin and into the galley is all possible. An appointment is made for Bryan to return to do the work on 27 July, by which time the crew will have returned from a spell back in Melbourne.

Engineer does his back

Stove Project: Day 6
In the cook's absence, the engineer goes on with the Stove Project single-handed. The new stove was left sitting on the floor of the stove area when the mate left the previous evening. At some stage it needs to be mounted on its gimbals, and the engineer decides that this is a job he can get on with while waiting for an appointment with a gasfitter. He does some clever things to adapt the brackets for the old stove to suit the new one, which is a little wider and has its own system of gimbals and brackets. Unfortunately the actual process of mounting the stove in the new arrangement involves some rather awkward manoeuvring, and there is a nasty moment when he feels something give in his lower back. He is immobilised and in considerable pain for the rest of the day.

Big spenders

Stove Project: Day 5
We begin the day by ringing around to find a gasfitter and after a few tries have an appointment made for lunchtime Wednesday. Then we discuss where to place the gas alarm and solenoid safety switch. The logical place seems to be near the plate rack, to the right of the stove, where the alarm can be set into a panel. Next we decide to unscrew that panel to check that there is room behind it. As it turns out, removal of this panel necessitates removal of the plate rack, the cup rack, the sliding doors on the pantry cupboard. Since we are going to need access to the pantry cupboard anyway as the gas line will come through it, we take everything out including the shelf. We also remove the panel above the stove. All of this uncovers all kinds of grot and sooty surfaces, so there is much cleaning to be done.
About lunchtime we take a break from scrubbing, head down Tedder Street for food and to catch the bus to Bias Boating chandlery. Found a taxi before the bus, so arrive there promptly, buy the gas alarm and find we can get a brand-new-in-box Force 10 stove direct from the agent today if we go and pick it up ourselves.
Walk from the chandlery to Southern Stainless, where we buy two stainless steel gas bottles and another mounting bracket. Book a maxi taxi, load ourselves and the gas bottles into it, and head to Ocean Solutions, the agents for the stove. Collect the stove, heave it into the taxi and head back to the marina. (Very happy taxi driver.) Load our purchases into a trolley and, with great care, shift them aboard Nahani. We then carefully demount the old kero stove, and heave it up the companionway into the cockpit. Very carefully lower the new stove down the companionway and remove it from its box. Clean the stainless steel surrounds of the stove area frantically, then put the new stove in place. We just have time for a calming drink before the mate heads off in a taxi for Coolangatta airport to catch a plane back to Melbourne.

Research

Stove Project: Days 2-4
The Queen's Birthday long weekend limits our activities on the project to preparation and research. There are two issues to address: where to run the gas line from the gas bottles to the stove, and what size of gas bottle to get.
We begin on the first problem. For the voyage north, we'd stored quite a bit of stuff that normally lives in the dinghy in the guest cabin, because the dinghy had been inverted on the davits, and we didn't have anyone else aboard but captain and mate. So everything comes out of the guest cabin, including the mattress, and is distributed elsewhere: on deck (oars, rudder, Fanno the kayak), upper seaberth (bedding), standing in the front cabin (mattress). We then remove some of the cedar panelling that covers the side of the boat and the underside of the deck. We also take out the panel that surrounds the fridge and includes the doors to the hatches beside and below the fridge. Then we take enough items out of the locker in the lazarette so that we can see where the pipe will go between the back corner of the deck, where it will begin, and the entry point into the guest cabin. We look at a range of options for the line ranging from above deck, under the cockpit coaming, just under the deck, along the chine about midway up the side wall, or underneath the bunk. Option 4, along the chine, seems to be the best option.
We spend time on the internet doing some further research on gas bottles. We find information that suggests that refilling bottles is giving way to the Swap'n'Go regime, and consider using standard galvanised bottles that we can swap, rather than the special stainless bottles designed for marine use. The engineer thinks that he could build a very effective locker using a section of poly pipe, but our internet research indicates that pipe with a diameter big enough for a gas bottle could be hard to get, and can probably only be purchased in 6m lengths - a bit difficult to handle without a car. But we make lists of the pros and cons of standard bottles vs the stainless bottles.
In between ferreting around in the boats innards and staring at computer screens, we go for walks down Tedder Street for food, and feed a large pile of washing through the marina laundry. We also go for walks around the marina, checking out all the older sailing yachts. Modern fibreglass production yachts such as Beneteaus and Jenneaus all have gas, but have lockers built into the boat, as do most power boats. So we need to find older yachts which have had gas added after they were built. We find a number where we can see the actual bottles, or a purpose-built added locker. Bottles are almost always at the back of the boat, often behind the back rails, strapped on with everything from elegant, welded frames that match the stanchions through to bits of rope. The gas connection gear is often open to the elements. Whenever we can we talk to the boat owners to find out what size bottles they use, and how long they last.
We move toward galvanised bottles, but eventually come full circle back to the stainless ones, as locker construction is beginning to look complicated, refilling seems to be what everyone does, and the slimmer stainless bottles will be less obtrusive than the fatter gal bottles, not to mention lighter to carry ashore for refilling. So by Monday evening we are set for a major excursion ashore on Tuesday to buy the stove and bottles.

Natives prove friendly

Stove Project: Day 1
Bright sunny morning, no wind, so we move promptly to bring the boat from where we were anchored in Marine Stadium to Southport Yacht Club. But by the time we've put her in the allocated pen, tied her up snugly, joined the Yacht Club and paid all our dues, we are hungry and eat lunch in the club.
We get advice from the friendly bloke in the chandlery about where to find stainless steel gas bottles, and the Yacht Club reception gets us a taxi. We head first to Bias Boating in Biggera Waters, because we have already confirmed that they have a Force 10 stove on the floor that we can look at. The cook has seen these stoves at Boat Shows in Sydney and Melbourne, and has been hankering after one since then, but needs to look more critically now that there is a real prospect of purchase.
The helpful people at Bias Boating lug the stove off the shelf so that we can measure everything, see where the gas connects, even try out the cook's favourite twin roasting dishes (carried there for the purpose) to see if they fit side by side in the oven, which they do. Engineer is happy with the general quality, and the bloke in Bias Boating says it will be no issue to drop the stove off at the Yacht Club Marina if we decide to buy. We have a look at gas alarms while we are there, another expensive item required as part of the project. Bias Boating recommend the same firm as did the Yacht Club chandlery, and as they are not too far up the road, we walk to Southern Stainless who have stainless gas bottles in all sizes, together with elegant stainless holders to clamp on to your rail. Engineer has the bright idea of buying a holder, on the basis of being able to return it if it doesn't fit, so that we can see just where it might be simply fitted to Nahani's rails. We take the bus back to the Yacht Club and the boat, where we are delighted to find that we can fit a holder on the rail just behind the side poles of the "jungle gym" that supports the radar, arials and wind generator. The Danbuoy will have to be relocated on one side, but that isn't a serious problem. So now we have both ends of the project sorted, apart from the actual purchase. Now for the really tricky bit - working out where and how to put a gas line from bottle to stove. We also have to find a spot for the gas alarm, but there are plenty of options.
The prospective hole in our finances is deepening all the time. We thought the stove itself was expensive, but two gas bottles, two holders and a gas alarm will cost nearly as much again. And then there's the cost of the bit in between, and a gas-fitter to do the connecting up. Once again BOAT = Bring Out Another Thousand. But we don't have much choice - can't keep going with an ageing stove that has continence problems.
Everyone was most helpful today, including the bus driver and a fellow passenger who saw us trying to memorise bus stops for future reference. We think we made a good choice in deciding to do the changeover here in the Gold Coast.

Stove Project - Introduction

Those of you who have been on Nahani will know that we refer to the kerosene cooker in the galley as Stove, because it has a defnite personality. It is temperamental, can be seriously difficult, and typically chooses to have an Issue when it causes maximum inconvenience. Stove has its own dedicated box of repair parts, and the engineer has spent countless hours coaxing it back into operation. Hundreds of dollars have been spent on new burners in the six plus years we have owned the boat. From time to time, Stove fills the boat with smoke and coats the walls and roof in the galley with a fine film of soot. Stove smells, both in operation and at rest. Lighting it is an art, requiring priming with metho followed by patient watching, of which only the cook and engineer are masters, and even they have the odd failure. Lighting it in a heaving sea is well-nigh impossible. The oven has a thermometer but no thermostat, so cooking anything that requires accurate temperature control is chancy, unless the cook is prepared to sit by the stove doing constant adjustment to the burner to maintain tbe desired temperature.
In Stove's defence, once the burners are alight they are hot and will heat food or boil water faster than any gas stove. And over the years, hundreds of nutritious and delicious meals have been concocted thereon or therein.
Now Stove appears to be terminally ill. What was a three burner stove with oven is now a 1 to 2 burner stove, no oven. No oven because one of the kerosene tanks under the oven has a very small leak, which becomes larger under pressure as the oven gets hot, and then catches fire, burning with a smelly yellow flame which deposits soot all over the inside of the oven. 1 to 2 burners because one of the three burners is permanently decomissioned because of a stripped thread in the burner mounting, and the pricker has packed up on one of the two remaining burners, so when it clogs up, intervention is required by the engineer before it will burn properly again.
We've decided that we've had enough of spending time and money trying to keep Stove alive, and that it is past its use-by date. A replacement will be bought and hopefully fitted while we are in Queensland. The distributors for the new Force 10 stove the cook wants to buy are based in the Gold Coast, so this seems like a good place to do the changeover.