I don’t know if blown warm-air heating had been invented when I lived on my wooden cutter in a mud berth back in the early 1970s, but if it had, nobody used it. The neighbours and I favoured solid fuel stoves because we loved what the late Ed Burnett described as the ‘thick heat’ they gave. It was charming on a frosty morning to see the smoke curling up from half a dozen chimneys into the still, sharp air as fires that had stayed ‘in’ through the night were stirred into lively action.
I’ve had a stove on all my boats since those days. Even my current fibreglass yacht
