Attainable Adventure Cruising had an interesting post on propane this morning which got me thinking in a couple of directions...
The first is how, as much as we try, there always seems to be a joker in the mix and that the best we can do is always to try and have a work-around waiting in the wings. In this case someone won't fill your bottles because of how old they are but if they were in date it might be the fact that the filling station was closed for a holiday or in the Caribbean simply that there was no propane available on the island until the next cargo boat arrives... There is always something waiting in the wings to make life interesting.
The other day when I was researching solid fuel stoves and heaters I noticed that Navigator Stove Works had a really neat drop in alcohol burner for their stoves that made all kinds of sense...
It especially makes sense for those who have a solid fuel stove and are going to be spending some time in the tropics where you may not want to turn your interior into a super sauna... Plus it is a back up system, which is no bad thing. That said, the cost of the drop in burner has a certain "ouch" factor at $215 each!
Our passage stove for years has been a SeaSwing that uses a propane bottle but as the price for the one pound bottles keeps climbing (at the store yesterday I noticed they were $7.98 a bottle) to silly prices, the thought that swapping over to an alcohol stove to use in it starts making all kinds of sense.
Of course, alcohol stoves don't put out as much heat as propane or kerosene stoves do, but if I run out of propane on an island where none exists I can still have my morning coffee even if I have to burn rum to do it...
At least on this island rum is a lot cheaper than those one pound propane bottles!
Listening to Quicksilver
So it goes...
