Do stoves need to be gimballed on a mono

[Dennis.G]

Our stove is gimballed, but 90% of the time it is used we have it locked down in steady position, and basically always have locked down when at anchor. Having the stove swinging side to side is not always to your advantage, that is for sure. It is nice to have gimballed at times, but I think one could live without it. We are seldom cooking in rough weather or when heeled over hard, it is just difficult regardless of having a gimballed stove.

[El Pinguino]

I always have the gimbals on my stove locked... even at sea... I just adjust the AoT (Angle of Tilt) to suit MAoB ( Mean Angle of Boat ) at the time...

Unless your stove is well ballasted so as to maintain a very low Centre of Gravity even with full pots and stuff on the top gimbals may just make things worse in a seaway.

Mine is a PoS Smev made by Dometic.... caravan quality, unballasted, and complete with caravan quality gimbals. A friend has a GN Space 'Levante' on a similar boat to mine and says he had to add extra ballast to it.... and it is top of the range...

I try to avoid tilt and rough but I may try ballasting the oven with dive weights and see how that works....

[Mike OReilly]

My stove is locked in place most of the time. But the gimbal is unquestionably useful when on a heel, or downwind in lumpy seas where we might be rolling around a bit.

Perhaps my stove is sufficiently bottom-weighted, but it is incredible how stable the cooktop platform remains. I will often use it as a stable counter to prepare sandwiches or whatnot. On our boat, it really is great.

I’m sure I could manage without the gimbal, but it just makes cooking and food preperation a lot easier when the seas get rolly.

[Snowpetrel]

I delivered a yacht once with a non-gimbaled stove. It was a rough passage and we did manage to cook by lashing down the pots with galvanized fencing wire, but it was much harder than it needed to be, even boiling water meant having to only half fill the kettle, then strap it down with the spout facing aft, and keep a close eye on it.

A decent option would be a gimbaled single burner stove that could be used when offshore. And a big non-gimbaled stove for better weather, A similar idea is to have a two burner gimbaled stove and grill, and a non-gimbaled oven.

Saying all this I think the Pardeys had a non-gimbaled athwartships stove and they certainly ate OK at sea, So with a very well thought out set of potholders and deep pots it may be doable. Might be worth downloading some of their Ebooks to find out how they set it up.

[El Pinguino]

The only time cooked food has not been served on my boat on passage has been when the cook has been indisposed .... and the crew haven't been feeling very hungry...

Maybe the trick is to have a boat that doesn't jump around in a seaway...

Feb 2004, 44*S, Lamb roast... just after we trashed the spinnaker in a bit of a squall... fixed gimbals..

[valhalla360]

Since no one bothered to ask before giving you an answer, what are your cruising plans?

If you will spend lots of time offshore, rounding cape horn, etc... gimbling on a monohull makes a lot of sense.

If you are mostly coastal or weekend cruising and cooking will mostly be at dock or at anchor, it really isn't needed. Save yourself the trouble.

[adlib2]

Originally Posted by Just Awesome

We are refitting our galley, and the only stove we could get in a decent size is designed to be installed as a solid fixture, I believe I can gimbal it bet the question came up as to weather it needs to be or not.
It seems to be difficult cooking either way.
We haven't been able to find a definite yes or no as to weather it's critical or not.

Absolutly

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Since no one bothered to ask before giving you an answer, what are your cruising plans?

If you will spend lots of time offshore, rounding cape horn, etc... gimbling on a monohull makes a lot of sense.

If you are mostly coastal or weekend cruising and cooking will mostly be at dock or at anchor, it really isn't needed. Save yourself the trouble.

Sure, but can anyone be sure that his cruising plans won't change over the period he owns the boat?

I wouldn't have a mono without some kind of gimbaled cooktop. My next boat will have a gimbaled counter as well. If I could, I would gimbal the whole bloody galley. Cooking in a seaway, particularly upwind in any kind of weather, is really hard, and yet, a really important thing to do to keep up the strength and morale of the crew. It's a really important issue and not something to make compromises with.

Like Ping, I have a POS Smev cooker but it does ok even with heavy full pots on top. It's the bigger 4 burner one which makes a difference, but I've never had any problem getting any gimballed stove to work right -- just add weight at the bottom of the oven if necessary -- not rocket science.

My next boat will not have gas cooking. I flirt with the idea of a Dickenson diesel stove, but as some have commented, you can't gimbal them. So maybe a gimballed counter with a couple of induction eyes, which I will want in any case. YMMV.

To the OP: You've gotten some good opinions on both sides; you'll have to make up your own mind. But if I were you, I wouldn't even think about doing it without gimbals. Not being able to cook sailing upwind in rough weather, just when the crew really needs the hot meals, is just totally unacceptable, in my opinion. Even if you only need it a couple of times a year, or even only some years in the future, that already justifies the expense.

[hamburking]

The OP does not mention the stove type or size. I am a fan of the ORIGO stoves, which have a gimbal kit for about $100 more.

Cooking at sea is a skill and an art. The level of difficulty of cooking at sea is hard to describe. But big pots, secure pot holders, good footing, and ample preparation are key. Personally, I'm happy to eat sandwiches and cold coffee for a couple days. If you are going to cross an ocean, well, you'll need more sandwiches.

There is a compromise of course. A fixed stove for 99% of your cooking. And a small gimballed single pot stove that mounts on a bulkhead for the occasional passage. In one pot you can make coffee or other simple, single pot dishes, which are really all you want on a passage anyway.

[TrentePieds]

Valhalla said it! Rephrased: "How do you cruise"?

But you are doing the right thing. Ask about what you know you don't know :-)

Keeping body and soul together at sea is rather different from doing so on land. So leave your shoreside habits ashore, and use your imagination to devise habits that will serve you at sea. And if you imagination doesn't sttretch, ask the old hands :-)

Common sense has to rule at all times. Very few of the new arrivals on this forum who dream of crossing oceans actually do so, I would imagine. Very few of the people, who "cruise" through here, actually live on their boats for prolonged periods of time. Thus "solutions" to problems that never arise may be interesting, but they are hardly of serious consequence for the majority of us,

In a thirty-footer designed in the "modern" idiom, i.e. a rather "rolley" boat, I have a fixed stove. Our seas, here, tend to be of rather short periodicity and consequently are quite steep, even when they aren't particularly high. Not ideal conditions for cooking.

Nevertheless, we cook. As Ann sez: a pressure cooker goes a long way thanks to the locking lid. Even heating water for a hot drink happens in the PC, because of that. The scalding water can't slosh out. How do we keep the PC from flying off the stove into the forward bunk as we bounce around? Simple. The stove has "fences" around the top of it (called "fiddles"). Onto the fiddles clams a pair of "grippers", sort of like artificial hands that hold the PC in place on the burner so it won't slide off. Could the PC jump right outta the clampsd. Possibly, but we've never come close to that. I would chicken out and find a hidey-hole before that could happen :-)!

You want more than coffee? You are hungry? Well, before you set out, you prepared several meals' worth of "fixings" - didn't you? In a retired plastic mayonnaise jar in the stowage you have all the dry goodies for an alloo ghobi, don't you? Toss it in the water in the PC and you have a nourishing tasty meal in ten minutes.

You are not a vegetarian, you say? You want meat? No prob. Same deal for a bourguinon. You have all the dry ingredients prepared in one plastic container, all the wets in another. Heat up the wets in the PC. Chuck in the drys and pop on the bob-weight and Bob's yer uncle. You need to eat in the cockpit? Don't use a plate cos the food will slide off, don't use a metal pot because the food will go cold. Use a deep wooden "kid" as sailors have done for centuries. Don't use a fork. Use a spoon.

So no - you don't NEED a gimballed stove. If you like 'em, by all means have one, but I think you'll find that their marginal utility when compared with a fixed stove, ain't great. The additional complexity and serviceng requirements prolly isn't worth it.

Adapt your working habits to what the seas and your boat require.

TP

[anacapaisland42]

AND...if you take food out of the oven....never rest it on the open door...unless you want it to be dumped on the floor as the stove tilts
signed
The Voice of Experience ...LOL

Boat life is all about tradeoffs. Only you can know what the right choice is for you. I can tell you, I like our gimballed stove. Makes cooking at sea a lot easier. And good food while underway is important for maintaining health and spirit of the crew. Don’t underestimate the importance of a good galley.[/QUOTE]

[tmason]

Our Princess stove would empty everything in your lap if you open the oven door in gimbal mode. Considering the cost it is very disappointing. I have thought about designing a sliding weight system tied to the door mechanism - maybe someday. Meanwhile we only use the cooktop underway.

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by svHyLyte

Frankly old son, if you don't know enough that your would ask such a question, you don't yet know enough to attempt living on a boat, in a marina to say nothing of at sea. Get a few tens of miles at sea under your belt and then come back and ask questions. This won't be one of them....

The foregoing isn't "kind". It is so, however....

I've got quite a few more than tens of miles at sea and I think it was a reasonable question. I've always had gimbaled stoves but keep it locked anytime we are anchored or moored. Our boat is pretty stable and I prefer to have it stationary, especially when putting things in or out of the oven or setting a heavy pot on top.

So, in the harbor you don't need them but the gimbals become an advantage at sea for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is that it allows you to cook while heeled over. That's not really necessary while coastal cruising but it's really nice if you take your boat offshore and it's windy enough to keep you heeled over. The second advantage to a gimbaled stove is that it provides a level surface while underway to prepare food on or to set a glass while you pour a liquid into it. We have a corian panel that is stored under the stove but just fits securely on top of our stove so when not using the top burners, it becomes a level, flat surface on which to prepare food, etc. very handy!

I'd say that you'd be wise to strive to gimbal it if you can, but if you can't, you'll probably be fine and as someone else suggested, maybe you can add a gimbaled single burner for use a at sea.

[Brewgyver]

Properly used, a gimballed stove will lreduce the chance of a burn injury. A pot of soup or pasta sauce flying off the stovetop could result in a very serious injury. As in potentially life threatening.

[NevisDog]

Well the most experienced charter skipper I met had a standard, full-height, household, four-burner, fixed cooker/stove that he used daily. It had a marvellous set of pot clamps that screwed up hard against the pots. Admittedly his boat was a heavy, traditional 60' gaff ketch, so motion was always comfortable and with slack bilges, heel angle was steady as a rock. He said the wasted space around a gimballed stove was unacceptable.

Each to his own.