Back in the day, many offshore voyaging pioneers like the Pyes, Smeatons, and Hiscocks cooked on Primus stoves: Peculiar machines that relied on hand pumped air pressure to force kerosene (paraffin) into a burner that was preheated with metholated spirit (industrial alcohol). Tales abounded of flare-ups, singed eyebrows and sea-cooks totally traumatized by the unpredictable behaviour of these machines.
Polaris, the sailboat we looked after for a month in Greenland, is fitted with a three burner kerosene stove from Switzerland-based Bertschi. The fundamental technology is the same as the Primus, but the pressure is provided by an electric pump (with manual backup) and the burners preheated by electric elements (you could still use alcohol if these failed). However, even with this automation, cooking on this machine requires strong nerves, chanting incantations in an obscure Swiss mountain dialect, and the sacrifice of small animals.
The stove does include a small oven, but this requires substantial reconfiguration of the stove to use and there is no grill. Other problems are the smell of burning kerosene, which can turn even the strongest stomach, particularly at sea, and the risk of some quite spectacular, but probably not actually dangerous, flare-ups if the burner is not heated enough before turning on the valve.
When you add to all that the difficulty of controlling the temperature of the elements and the truly eye-popping cost of the machine, you could be forgiven for wondering what the point of going this route is? Well, kerosene has three big advantages over propane as a cooking fuel:
- Its vapors will not pool in the bilge waiting to blow you to kingdom come the way propane can.
- Kerosene can be procured almost anywhere, albeit in varying qualities, with none of the problems of different valve standards that can make getting a propane cylinder filled difficult or impossible, even where that fuel is available. You can even, at a pinch, use aviation jet fuel in a kerosene stove.
- A kerosene tank, like the one on Polaris that takes up no more space than two 20-pound propane bottles, can hold enough fuel for at least a year of cooking.
Will we be fitting Morgan’s Cloud with a Swiss kerosene stove? No, but we can see the point, given the mission that Polaris was built for.
By the way, as we discovered when I was cooking Christmas dinner, an incompletely combusting kerosene burner can produce carbon monoxide just the same as a poorly adjusted propane stove. All boats should be fitted with a CO detector like both Polaris and Morgan’s Cloud are.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I would like to nominate CNG stoves/ovens as a good alternative to both kero and propane. Having survived a blowup and burnup on a 75′ ketch as we were leaving New York Harbor for the Med in the late ’60′s due to propane lying in the bilge and the genset lighting it off, CNG that is lighter than air seems to work well. Outside the US it is reasonably easy to obtain also.
I fail to see why people continue to use cookers using any fuel other than that which is normally on board the boat in large quantities, diesel. My diesel cooker works well, is controllable and gives no smell. The fuel will not explode and there is enough on board to cook the largest turkey. Unfortunately, the oven is not large enough to take an ox, otherwise there is enough fuel to cook that! The only downside, apart from the cost that seems to apply to the kerosene cooker described in your article, is that it needs at least 12v to start.
Diesel cookers sound interesting, although the only ones I have ever seen were huge, smelly, heavy, and temperamental. That may have changed.
CNG seemed like it would become the fuel of choice on boats at one point in the eighties but has faded out since. The big drawback with it is that it packs a lot less energy per pound than propane. Also, the bottles are relatively big and heavy because CNG must be stored at very high pressure to remain a liquid. I’m interested that you would say that it is generally available outside of the USA. My understanding, admittedly based on hearsay, is the exact opposite.
While we see the benefits of other fuels for cooking and, as any regular reader of this site knows, we are very concerned about the explosion danger inherent in propane, we can’t see changing from that fuel on Morgan’s Cloud, if for no other reason than the instant and controllable heat ability of a propane cooker. By contrast, as we understand it, all of the liquid fuels, kerosene (paraffin), diesel and alcohol (don’t go there) require a preheat cycle that unacceptably interrupts, at least to us, the rhythm and timing of cooking. But then we are big time food lovers that like to cook quite complicated multi-item meals, often with sauces as well. Doing a John-make-fire act complete with preheating and flare-ups for the three rings and the oven required in the middle of making my pork chops with sherry apricot sauce recipe, would be a sure route to tears!
One alternative that does look interesting, is that of induction and convection electric cooking. Steve and Linda Dashew have been experimenting with this technology and have found that it is so efficient that using it with battery power, through an inverter, is practical. Of course they have huge battery banks on their boats. We have not got into the details of what minimum battery bank and generation capacity is required to make this practical, but it does bear further study.
Aloha John, I ‘m interested in the company that built that fine looking kerosene stove you have pictured in this article? They are really hard to find, so if you have any tips on getting one, I’d love to know! Mahalo, Marina
Hi Marina
As luck would have it I was recently looking for a replacement heater for our yacht, and came across Bertschi. They have a website at http://www.bertschi-petrol.ch complete with English translation.
But I’d agree with everything John says re kerosene as a cooking medium – smell, flare -ups etc. – having owned a boat with a kerosene cooker in the past, albeit it one less sophisticated than the Bertshci range.
Best wishes
Colin