Origo – Adventures on the Club

At least once a month there are questions on the cruising forums or one of the Facebook pages about alcohol stoves. Invariably people will chime in about how dangerous they are, how slow it is, how it doesn’t burn hot, etc. I try to dispel the myths, but I figured it was time for a blog post on the subject. Perhaps it will help people who Google the subject but don’t necessarily participate in the forums or use Facebook.

We bought an Origo stove for our Bristol 24 and Pegu Club came with one, so we have been using them now for the seven years (wow!) we’ve owned a boat. Given that we did a complete refit on Pegu Club and touched virtually everything on her, it would stand to reason that if we weren’t satisfied with an alcohol stove we would have taken the refit opportunity to switch to propane or gas. But I can honestly say that the subject of switching never came up because we were 100% satisfied with using an alcohol stove.

So without further introduction, below are my answers to the questions that seem to come up most frequently: Continue reading “An old workhorse – our Origo alcohol stove.” →

We were in extremely high spirits as we drove home from Shenny this past Saturday – we were finished sanding! All told we spent 24 hours scraping and 16 hours sanding. There’s no doubt about the fact that it was hard work, but when we think about how much money we saved compared to hiring someone it was definitely worth it. The best part is that we shouldn’t ever have to do it again. If for some reason we do (like, twenty years down the road), we’ll pay someone given that we’ll be living in a country where the labor costs will be substantially lower than here in Connecticut.

The worst part about Saturday’s job is that we had to scrape and sand the boat where the poppets were. Continue reading “40 Hours Later…” →