FUEL

This subject has to be approached in conjunction with the heating. There are many good arguments for having only one fuel aboard: one that is easily and universally available, and easy to load. The commonest fuel, and one that most of us are obliged to have in any event, for propulsion, is diesel oil, so let us consider that as a sole fuel.

• Diesel •

It not only drives the main engine but it can also drive an auxiliary generator if you want one. It will drive an outboard; unfortunately these are heavy though powerful, and not very convenient. In the low power range one can have a battery- run electric outboard, thus using diesel oil at one remove. There are very good diesel heaters on the market. At the simple end I like the Danish made Refleks heater, which requires no fan and is therefore silent, but of course it heats only the compartment in which it is mounted. English-manufactured Taylor’s are similar, and actually look a little neater, as do the Kabola. There are American and Dutch heaters too, all having gravity feed and dependent on a sort of carburetor made in the USA. Some of these heaters have a back-boiler which can be used for hot water and/or a syphonic radiator. There is a good but very expensive tiny water-circulating pump available for central heating. I am not so happy with blown-air oil heaters, having seen a serious fire in Antibes which happened when the crew were ashore for a very short time. It is possible in a bigger boat to have proper central heating with a normal oil-fired boiler. There are very good boilers working on the same gravity feed system we mentioned above. The basic boiler is quite small, but it can be installed in multiples. Very clever.

Cooking can also be done by diesel. There is a Canadian stove, the Dickenson, it not only cooks but provides hot water and central heating too. Bulky and heavy, and expensive too.

• Gas •

There is no other single-fuel alternative to diesel. Bottled gas for cooking will, however, save considerable initial cost and a certain amount of weight, some of which will be lost because of the price, size and weight of the necessary number of cylinders required for reasonable independence from the shore. It will bring problems apart from its propensity to explode, which can be controlled: practically every major country has its own size and design of gas bottles, very often with differently threaded connections. To change bottles at a retail supplier it is necessary to hand in a local bottle. Odd-sized gas bottles can sometimes be refilled at depots, but then there is the problem of transport, for the depots are seldom conveniently placed for yachts. I remember helping another boat take their bottles to a depot in Greece, and beating a hasty retreat as I observed the workman pouring liquid gas into an open cylinder through a funnel while he was smoking a cigarette. Possibly the mixture was too rich to explode, and the fumes did not rise. I wonder if he is still alive. If only Brussels would devise the European standard gas bottle . . . but that would be doing something useful. One problem with gas in the present nanny-state environment is that installations must be made by specialists who consider themselves on an intellectual and financial par with brain surgeons. Perhaps they are. Think hard before opting for gas as the sole method of cooking, except in a small boat when I would agree that it is the only solution. If the boat is big enough to have a powerful separate 240v generator, then one can maintain the one-fuel principle by cooking with electricity. We do this in Hosanna. It can mean a lot of generating, even in the evening, when it can cause bad feeling among neighbours in a quiet harbour. It is becoming more and more common especially among charter yachts. Generators have become much quieter and more tolerable recently. We have a four plate hob, one of which is electric and three gas, and using the gas below and the barbecue on deck is a good way of solving the noise problem if too close to neighbours, the amount of gas required for this occasional use being very small. Hosanna has on deck a little sheltered summer kitchen with a single miniature gas ring for brewing up late at night. We do tend to swing at anchor rather than moor cramped up in harbours, and it’s more peaceful for us too. We use Camping Gaz, and though this is about three times the price of normal methane, the cylinders are exchangeable almost everywhere.

• Paraffin (kerosene) •

This is not suitable for the ordinarily hedonistic live-aboard. We have small oil lamps in gimbals which we keep lit at night at sea, turned low, when they provide a faint glimmer which allows us to move about without switching on electric lights and spoiling night vision. We have recently seen a Canadian yacht with tiny, low-powered floor lights such as aircraft have along the walkways; this is an excellent idea while at sea by night. Coarse, cheap paraffin is getting hard to find because rural communities are changing to liquid gas, while the refined, treated anti-pong variety is available in miniature bottles at very high prices.

• Cooking with alcohol •

This is a menace. It surprises me that the Americans have tolerated it for so long, and I am happy to note a trend away from it at last. In some popular Caribbean anchorages you can sit enjoying a Planter’s Punch after sunset while watching neighbouring Americans tossing overboard their flaming alcohol cookers. Some keep them on the end of a wire so they can easily haul them back inboard.

• Solid fuel •

The lovely old sloop Diotima in which the late Admiral Goldsmith lived the life of a dedicated singlehander (and, as previously mentioned, on the foredeck of which he died, weighing anchor at Monemvasia) had a solid fuel stove which was lovely in winter but noticeably warm in summer. Fuel was never a problem for him, he just gathered it from the beach. What a lovely little yacht! We last saw her in Hydra, now owned by a Greek sculptor who cares for her. Hosanna has two woodburning stoves for winter evenings; we can sometimes find enough driftwood to feed them for free. We have a derrick, and finding a full-sized eucalyptus tree floating offshore in the Ionian, we hoisted it aboard, acquiring fuel and at the same time removing a danger to navigation. We then landed it to cut it up with a chain saw. We were told off by the Port Captain for making too much mess, but we swept up the sawdust which made good firelighters when soaked in old engine oil. The cruising life teaches you to use any resource you come across, usually this is better than the latest gadgets.

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