When you install Lithium batteries, you assume all your troubles are over. Do not be alarmed, this is perfectly normal.

But your troubles are not over.

I realised this in Panamarina, the little French marina in Panama about three months after switching to 600ah of pretty blue Victron cells in Aruba. One day, the sun didn’t shine.

Certainly, the wind didn’t blow – the wind never blows in Panamarina, it’s surrounded by hills and islands on all sides. It is “very sheltered” as they say on their website.

So sheltered, you can’t even make a cup of coffee. This isn’t a problem in Panamarina because there’s a proper French café serving proper French coffee. But there are plenty of other places where there isn’t – like the Irish Sea and St Helen’s Pool in the Scillies. Then it’s lukewarm water and cold rice with kidney beans and salad dressing for dinner.

It was six months before I realised I needed a backup to the induction hob.

The first backup was one of those butane camping stoves that comes in a moulded plastic case. You can buy five-packs of the disposable cylinders that fit into a slot so that, if you get it wrong, liquid butane sprays all over your hand (but the good news is that the electronic ignition won’t work).

I had one of these for a year or more, and it was very good – once I learned to insert the disposable cylinders correctly.

But not so good after several cloudy days in Grenada when the trade wind was down to a murmur – and I found I had disposed of all the disposable cylinders. That was when I discovered the big hardware store at Spice Island Mall didn’t understand the concept of a “butane camping stove”.

I was telling this story at Happy Hour in the One Love Bar when one of the seasoned Caribbean Hands placed his bottle of Carib in its foam rubber cozy back on the table in front of him and divested himself of the following wisdom: “If you’ve got rid of gas because you don’t want gas on the boat, there’s no point in bringing it back again in smaller cylinders. If that stuff gets out, it’ll still sink to the bilge and blow you up – even a small amount. Alcohol is what you want. Alcohol vapour is lighter than air. Just drifts out of the hatch and blows away…”

Of course, I knew all about alcohol cookers – I had one on Amicus in the 70s. It took my eyebrows off.

But, better to lose your eyebrows than your boat.

I bought a tiny alcohol camping stove. It came with full instructions. They said: “It is forbidden to add alcohol to the burning alcohol stove.”

“It is forbidden to add alcohol to uncooled alcohol stove.”

“It is forbidden to extinguish it with water and blow it with the mouth.”

“If you accidentally spill alcohol outside the alcohol stove, you must wipe it with a rag before igniting it.”

“It is best not to use liquid alcohol but replace it with solid alcohol.”

There was much else besides – stuff like: “Incorrect handling can result in serious injury” and “Follow all safety instructions”, but I didn’t bother with the safety instructions – after all, how hard could this be? Even if it was designed for a campsite where the ground stays level, rather than Prickly Bay with the swell rolling in around the point.

Actually, the instructions wouldn’t have helped at all because no sooner had I lit it with my turbo lighter and the vivid blue flames erupted with a “pop”, than I realised that I had balanced it on top of the gimballed (but defunct) gas stove back to front. Now I had no access to the lever which regulated the vivid blue flames…which were now licking hungrily at the deckhead.

It was at this point that I decided the best thing to do was turn the alcohol camping stove through 180° – at the same time as one of those swells set the boat rocking merrily (not like that nice level campsite) – and some of the alcohol slopped out of the reservoir.

The burning alcohol, that is.

It was at this point that I made a noise (it was later identified as a squeak) and my son Hugo poked his head in through the companionway and said something I shall not repeat.

I said there was no need to panic and, panicking, pulled out the fire blanket.

Placing the fire blanket hurriedly over the flames caused the gimballed stove to swing and more alcohol – flaming alcohol – to spill from the reservoir (it is better to replace it with solid alcohol, after all).

Hugo said something else I shall not repeat.

There was a brief discussion about the wisdom of lifting the fire blanket to see if the fire had gone out yet (it hadn’t).

Hugo was in favour of breaking out the fire extinguisher and “striking knob hard”. I said that would make an awful mess.

He said: “Not as much mess as burning down the boat.”

I think I’ve got the hang of it now. I have even found a way to “add alcohol to uncooled stove” (just add a capful and let it boil away before refilling from the old lemonade bottle).

And in this way, you can still have a cup of coffee when the sun doesn’t shine, and the wind doesn’t blow.

Postscript: In the end, I looked up “Solid alcohol” and discovered you can buy something that looks like a tin of shoe polish, which will solve all these problems – although it won’t be half so much fun!

At the time I wrote this, I removed the induction hob before placing the alchohol stove directly on top of the defunct gas hob (which no longer has its burners). Now I don’t bother. It goes on top of the hob, held by the fiddles. That does place it very high – I just remove the pan when it needs stirring.

Old Man Sailing

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