Quote:
Originally Posted by Auspicious
The topic is Induction stoves for boats. If you are going to talk about cookers on boats you have to address gimbals.
I strongly disagree with you. Gimbals are very important. Gimbals add a lot. I'm a delivery skipper and have sailed a LOT of boats. I have more comparisons than most people have the opportunity to make.
By the time conditions become extreme enough for a well-gimbaled cooker to be hitting the stops most people aren't doing a lot of cooking. By that time on a fixed cooktop pot restraints are not effective at all. Well before those sort of conditions I have had to quite literally tie pots and pans in place. You better have dual loop handles on your cookware.
Gas and gimbals are not out.
Induction is clearly more efficient than conventional electric. From an energy generation perspective the comparison with gas is dependent on fuel costs, generator fuel consumption, battery bank capacity, solar, and inverter efficiency.
A fixed cooktop may be fine for dock queens and coastal cruisers who hunker down and wait for placid weather windows. They are certainly going to lead to a lot of compromises on any reasonable offshore passage.
I'm not aware of any induction cooktops that are gimballed. To ignore that is short sighted and a disservice to others looking for information. Any given person may choose a fixed cooktop anyway, but I would hope they do so with their eyes open.
I have seen portable induction cookers attached to the top of a conventional propane cooker. Additional weight was required in the oven to balance the extra weight of the portables and the height of the cookware.
I can give you two examples just from the last few months.
I took a Valiant 42 from Annapolis to St Thomas. Conventional propane cooker in gimbals. Moderately bumpy passage. No problem pumping out three meals a day and innumerable pots of coffee and tea.
I sailed a Lagoon 420 catamaran from St. Thomas to Hampton VA. Fixed propane cooker. Similar to somewhat more benign conditions as the other passage. Even with doubled up pot holders (restraints) keeping food in the pots and pots on the stove was a chore. We cooked pretty much everything in a pressure cooker (which we had to recover from the floor a few times) and hot drinks (coffee/tea/cocoa) required monitoring which had an impact on watchstanding.
Regardless of energy technology a fixed cooktop will have a big impact on meal planning and contingency planning. Any electrical cooker will require contingency planning; I see lots of generator failures. Then what?
Induction has some real attractions. Lack of gimbals and energy consumption are not among them. Can those things be managed by accepting limitations and making compromises? Sure.
For the offshore sailor you simply cannot best a gimballed cooker and for now that is a major con for induction.
Gimbals matter. |
I agree that the question of gimbals is very important.
Most cruisers do most of their cooking at
anchor or dockside, so fixed cookers will work most of the time, I guess.
But I could not cook on passage without a gimballed cooker, not even in moderate weather. Any kind of heel at all really screws up the cooking.
In fact I would go further and say that besides a gimballed cooker, you really need some kind of gimballed working surface as well, to cook with reasonable comfort. I find cooking offshore a real laborious hassle except in a dead calm, and I bet I'm not the only one. It's bloody hard to live on a heel altogether, even if it's only 5 degrees and no big
boat motion, and I do really understand cat sailors on this.
I've just finished 1500 miles of sailing in May, much of it upwind, and was reminded again of how hard it is to cook offshore. I have a really well designed
galley compared to other cruising boats, ideal u-shape with the sink inboard, front-opening fridge aligned fore and aft, as it should be. I've hardly seen a better thought-out
galley. But it still sucks cooking offshore, trying to keep stuff from sliding down the counter as you try to cook, trying to get stuff out of cabinets which are facing downhill on a heel, etc. etc. etc. I was left really unsatisfied with how it all works offshore, however fabulous it is dockside.
I would like one gimballed working surface where I can lay stuff out which I am using immediately, and on the non-gimballed
parts, some kind of fences or something to catch stuff and keep it from flying around. Maybe something on the bulkhead -- some kind of shelves with deep fiddles or pigeon holes where you can put different things you are using to cook with, without them flying around.
I don't see any reason in the world why an induction cooktop (and electric oven) couldn't be gimballed just like a gas one. I don't know why that is supposed to be a "major con".
After finishing this big sailing trip, I was left with new respect for Henri Amel's weird galleys. Aligned athwartships so that all the drawers and cabinets work on a heel, although that really makes a strange
salon configuration. The more I sail offshore, however, the more I realize that Amel's weird stuff usually has a rather well thought out idea behind it.
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