The link is no good for those who don't give money to the Murdochs. But I'm very interested to find out what happened, as my own experience is that metho is very safe, since you can put it out just by splashing water, coffee, beer, wine on it.

Metho is not safe if you try to fill up when the stove is hot or worse still alight or when the flame goes out and is re lit after a minute or so and the vapours have been allowed to fill the area.

rumblefish said..

wongaga said..
The link is no good for those who don't give money to the Murdochs. But I'm very interested to find out what happened, as my own experience is that metho is very safe, since you can put it out just by splashing water, coffee, beer, wine on it.

Sorry, often they give you 5 free views a month

No free views for me, they probably know how I feel about the Murdoch press.

I agree the extinguisher may have worsened the problem by splashing burning fuel around. But as I said earlier, metho seems to me the easiest fuel to deal with if you know to just throw water on it.

bizarre. have had metho stoves for over 30 years have had a few flare ups through carelessness ,even put 1 out with a fire extinguisher but find it hard to believe you could burn a boat down while using one

Poodle said..
Agreed, methos stoves very safe, as long as you dont perform any Darwin acts.

Dont fill through the top - They usually have stickers saying this.

Careful dousing a metho fire with water, liquid, etc - It can just dilute & spread the fore, and the flames can be difficult to see.

Fire blanket always a cheap & effective solution - But dont hang it on the shelf behind the stove (ie: you must reach across burning metho stove to grab fire blanket).

Lessons learnt the hard way are usually those most well understood!

Hi, I would suggest that a fire blanket is not such a good idea for a metho fire, it acts as a wick. A friend tied alongside once with his new to him boat with the humble metho stove, all bright and shiny, and when he lit it for the first time it lit nicely and shortly thereafter the flame burst forth towards the ceiling. The fire blanket thrown over it was saturated in burning metho! An extinguisher carefully used saved the day.
The problem turned out to be that the PO had polished the stove to make it look it's best and the vent hole to the tank was blocked and as it heated up the stove forced more and more metho out the burner.
Know your equipment and maintain correctly.

Ramona said..
I have fire extinguishers at both ends of the saloon. I have a gas stove. If I had a metho stove I think I would install a couple of extinguishers either side of the cabin hatchway, just inside so that they could be reached from the cockpit. Either that or sit right by the stove and watch it carefully.

or put your fingers in your ears when the gas explodes

You don't have to be stupid to blow you boat up with a gas explosion. You have to be quite smart as exampled by the video posted here a while back of those Brit blokes that do destruction tests on yachts.

You pretty much have to do it on purpose.

Follow the golden rule, turn gas off at bottle after use and you will most likely survive boat ownership.