Scotty wrote:
it's cold sailing now. I thought about Thom's pilot house more
than a few times last weekend. I got (for free) a small space
heater that fastens to a small propane bottle. It works OK, takes
the chill out of the cabin, but doesn't make it toasty. Maybe
I'll get another one (for free).

What do you use to heat your boat?


Webasto T-90 diesel furnace & radiators. Warms the boat up quite nicely,
especially the head. Not the most practical solution, the system is
relatively bulky & expensive & tedious to install, but having a warm
boat on cold days (last winter the river froze over) is worth it. My
wife calculated that we used about 20 gallons of fuel last winter,
heating the boat up toasty warm on weekends.

Small combustion heaters usually dump a LOT of moisture into the air,
along with CO2 and CO. Getting enough air in & out of the cabin is not
too difficult but you're left with high humidity. The times I've used
them, the boat turns chilly & damp almost immediately when you turn them
off.

There are a number of small cabin heaters that would be much easier to
install and take up little room. I have a Shipmate Skippy stove in the
garage, a small nautical version of the old pot-bellied stove. I used to
put cans of sterno in it, clean & easy; but it could burn charcoal or
wood or anything. For a long time I looked for a bulkhead-mount
fireplace that could burn both diesel fuel & solid, but nobody makes
such a thing.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King