Now I'm cooking with gas!

Back in the days of my youth, we lived in caves and cooked over campfires using wood as fuel. It worked but it was awfully slow when we were standing around with an appetite and waiting for a slab of woolly mammoth to be reheated to body temperature. One evening, our cooking session was interrupted by a large dinosaur - a brontosaurus, as I remember. We dove for cover in the cave while the bronto sniffed around hoping for some form of food. Being strictly vegetarian, he/she didn't find anything of interest. Being strictly vegetarian, the critter also farted prolifically. One of these expulsions of gas came when the bronto was close to the fire. The ensuing explosion frightened the critter away.

As with many disasters, there was a lesson to be learned. Acting on a hunch, we went looking for brontosauri the next day. We carried with us some size able clay urns. The objective was to get close enough to catch an urn-full of flatulence. We were successful. The evening's cooking session went much faster as we released the urns of brontosaurus gas through large diameter bamboo tubes in the vicinity of the fire. In short order, we were eating dinner. Thus came the expression, "Now we're cooking with gas!"

Fast forward now to life aboard Laelia. Since I moved aboard in December, I have been cooking on a single burner hotplate. You can see the hotplate in the picture to the right. I did have a section of counter top over that big hole, but you can kind of get the idea what my galley (kitchen) looked like. It works but the hotplate is sometimes maddenly slow. I timed how long it took to get a half filled pasta pot to boil - 45 minutes! Not satisfactory! I like my pasta and when I get home from work at 7:30 PM, I don't feel like waiting 45 minutes for the water to boil. What to do?

My first thought was to go back to the olden days but I quickly realized that there were no longer any dinosaurs roaming nearby. I suppose cows would be an adequate substitute but those are about as available as dinosaurs here in Silicon Valley.

While perusing a West Marine catalog, I came across a Shipmate 3 burner propane stove that looked like just the thing. It even has gimbals. Gimbals are devices to keep the stove level while the boat is rolling from side to side. I paid an outrageous amount of money to have a propane locker installed in the lazarette (a storage compartment in the very farthest aft section of the cockpit). Unfortunately, this used up all my money. I had to wait until I found a job and paid off some bills before I could actually buy the stove.

Last weekend, I ordered the stove. On Wednesday, I got a call telling me that the stove had arrived. I left work early to pick it up and hot footed it back to Laelia to install it. Amazingly enough, it turned out to be not much of a problem. By 11 PM, I had it installed and I was boiling water in my tea kettle. See the picture to the right.

This evening, I did a comparison. I was lusting for a pot of spaghetti so I hauled out the pasta pot, filled it, turned on the stove and started a timer. Fourteen minutes later, I had a vigorously boiling pot of water. Huzzah! I'm back to cooking with gas!

By the way, the wind vane project is moving along. I am waiting for some parts so I can finish it off. I will post pictures and commentary on the process after the first sailing trial. Stay tuned!