Good Wood Stove for Boat?

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Billy123

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Mar 5, 2011
91
PA
What kind of wood is best to burn on the open seas?
 

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First time I have ever heard that question.
 
Billy123, The only abundant wood source I've seen on the open seas is driftwood, and you don't have to get permission from anyone to take it either.
 
double-d said:
Billy123, The only abundant wood source I've seen on the open seas is driftwood, and you don't have to get permission from anyone to take it either.
Moisture content might be high..just sayi'n. lol
 
I think you have the Little Cod there. I believe you can burn coal in it. I'd probably do that because seasoning wood on a boat would be a b*tch.

Matt

EDIT: I just looked at the site and it wasn't coal, it was charcoal. Don't burn coal.

Matt
 
Bio Bricks? If you can keep them dry??

Nancy
 
The best wood is dry wood. I like unfinished oak flooring scraps for these little stoves. Often you can get them for free. A small, plastic garbage can filled with them should keep them dry. That will be enough to keep the little stove going for a while. Bring some SuperCedars along for easy starts. Nice installation. Do you know what boat this is?
 
Oh, c'mon, Billy, we know you just posted that question so you'd have an excuse to post that picture. Trust me on this one, we are suitably impressed.

Frankly, I think the boat is just the rationale--the point of it is to be able to transport that delicious stove from one place to another. But an interesting question that this brings up: I wonder how people kept the fires burning on ocean voyages back in the days of the big sails? Surely keeping things dry and in sufficient stock was a challenge. . .
 
I was searching chimney images and spotted that one.

I guess it burns "boatloads" of wood!

I know, "yachts not funny"!
 
Presuming you were serious, which I doubt, :) anything but driftwood, unless you do all your navigating on a fresh water lake. Ocean driftwood seasons into a nice salt log. You burn it in your stove at great peril.
 
Billy123 said:
What kind of wood is best to burn on the open seas?

I am afraid that this nice pilothouse cruiser (perhaps one of the older Nauticat sailboats?) has been turned into a "dockominium". No self-respecting sailor would put a hot stove close to the navstation because of the risk of injury. Even when the stove is cold one would not want to go out in rough weather and get slammed into metal contraptions with fairly sharp edges.

Also, the only functioning navigation instrument visible is the VHF radio (in laid-back pleasure-craft harbors a popular way to have long conversations with your neighbors), whereas the space for the radar only shows wires behind the glass.

Of course, 95% or so of all cruising vessels hardly ever leaves the harbor and now that quite a few people have lost their homes there will undoubtedly be many more sailors who simply move aboard their own boat, more often than not after finding out that the current boat resale market is so bad that selling one's boat to save one's house is not as logical an option as it may sound. Since the type of impromptu interior modification shown here , cute as it may be, tends to have a very negative effect on the resale value of any yacht, it seems clear that the owner is not expecting to move back on land anytime soon.

Nonetheless, IF one wanted to find firewood for a boat it would indeed not be wise to pick up any floating wood underway. In anchorages with big sandy beaches, however, it is usually possible to find some driftwood well above the normal high tide zone that was deposited there quite some time ago and has been largely desalted by the rain. Those of us who have enjoyed hiking and camping along the fabulous Olympic National Park beaches know that some of that wood burns quite well.

Henk
 
I've been watching House Hunters International on the DVR lately (think it is HGTV). They had a show on houseboats on the canals in Amsterdam. They have a deed and everything. Some have concrete foundations, some can be pulled around by another boat. Anyway, the buyers looked at 3 houseboats and 1 had a fireplace and 1 had a woodstove. Definitely no room for firewood storage though!

Interestingly the house they bought, the master bedroom had a 4' high ceiling. Definitely NOT for me. Some where beautiful though.
 
I thought Nauticat at first too, but the side lights don't seem right. There is some instrumentation blocked by the stove pipe and a big hole that might have housed a radar unit. Hard to say. I've seen some of these setups before. Not sure if people use them when out on the ocean, but they spend a lot of port time too. Some boats spend all of their time at the dock. lol.

Here's a couple shots of a boat I helped build. No woodstove, it uses a heat pump. At 51' it's not big, but it's like a cabinet inside. The head is a bit over the top with Guatemalan marble counters, but she's a nice boat.
 

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BeGreen said:
I thought Nauticat at first too, but the side lights don't seem right. There is some instrumentation blocked by the stove pipe and a big hole that might have housed a radar unit. Hard to say. I've seen some of these setups before. Not sure if people use them when out on the ocean, but they spend a lot of port time too. Some boats spend all of their time at the dock. lol.

Here's a couple shots of a boat I helped build. No woodstove, it uses a heat pump. At 51' it's not big, but it's like a cabinet inside. The head is a bit over the top with Guatemalan marble counters, but she's a nice boat.

"Nice"??

You mean downright gorgeous!!

Can you give me an url where I might find some more details?

Henk
 
The angles of the roof and wall section in the head remind me of a few Friday nights in my tewnties... :lol:
 
I have always liked the idea of a canal boat to cruise along our canals here in the England, just so I could have a stove like the one featured here:

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/thames/path/cast-iron-stoves-2

Not sure if I would burn too much driftwood though, the sea salt in the wood might not be too good for a cast iron stove.

Mind you, that would be the least of my problems if I was out on the high seas after a few drinks in a rolling swell trying to load anything into a woodburner.......
 
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