This is absolutely my favourite video. Not only did it set fire to the bunk cushions — leaving suspicious black-tinged holes in the tartan fabric — but also it set off the carbon monoxide alarm so that I had to take out the batteries. I know this is not recommended — but if they made the alarm a couple of hundred decibels quieter, they might save a lot more lives.
Anyway, something had to be done. On closer inspection, it was never going to work. The whole of the combustion chamber — a caste iron cylinder inside the stainless steel outer casing, was corroded away to nothing. This meant the burning embers could exit directly through the ventilation holes and land playfully on the cushions. I started looking at alternatives. The good thing about charcoal is that it is carbon-neutral the trees having already contributed to the global-cooling equation when they were growing.
However, nobody makes charcoal heaters for boats anymore — not Pansy; not Hampshire. I did like the idea of solid fuel. It would have to be the Newport bulkhead-mounted thingy. Twenty years ago, I would just have ordered one. Now, you check out these things on YouTube and, to me, they looked terribly flimsy. I could see myself cursing it. Ah, the Refleks; the heater of choice for Danish fisherfolk in the Heligoland Bight.
They do a little bulkhead-mounted version — which even comes with the optional extra of a tube to draw in cold air from floor level. I ordered one. I fixed a date for Lockgate Stoves to come and install it. It was, as I say, only the depleted bank account that jogged my memory.
I phoned them. Anyway, it looked as good as new. Actually not. After years of being heated until the whole thing glowed, the once-gleaming stainless steel had been burnished to the colour of caramelised toffee. I rubbed at it with some sort of blue paste that came with the boat.
