There was frost on the dock this morning! I had to walk flat footed like a duck to keep from slipping and sliding. Now that the cold weather has hit with a vengeance, the diesel forced air heater is a blessing.
There was a time, when we were much younger, when we would set a clay flowerpot upside down on the alcohol stove as a source of heat. The flowerpot would get red hot and radiate heat throughout the cabin of our Catalina 27, Yes, Dear. We would happily hang on the hook at Treasure Island or Ayala Cove for days at a time throughout the winter months.
When we bought the Catalina 36, one of the first things we put on was a kerosene heater. It's a lovely thing - all brass and shiny, very nautical and English looking, but unfortunately not very efficient - just another pretty face I'm afraid. Captain Sweetie finally put a 12-volt fan next to the darn thing so we could blow the heat around the cabin. It made the overhead sooty and black and didn't put out enough heat to make up for the amount of moisture it produced. It wound up doing duty as a glorified candleholder. Since he had drilled a big hole in the cabin top to install the Charlie Noble, we couldn't remove the darned thing without leaving a serious scar, so it was mostly a conversation piece.
Our first forced air furnace was a Wallace which we bought at a boat show. That little furnace, and the custom-made mattress, were the very best things we added to the sailing Dancing Dragon.
The very first improvement we added to the trawler was a big forced-air Webasto furnace.
The installation of any furnace is guaranteed to be more than a four-swearword job, many, many more I'm afraid. It takes weeks of planning, measuring, drilling, and sawing to complete the project, which is why paying somebody for an installation is so expensive.
Laying the heating ducts through the cramped engine compartment and behind the storage lockers in the aft cabin almost killed poor old Sweetie, but he persevered and after working many weekends in a row for long miserable hours in inhuman contorted positions, and uttering many a foul word, the job was complete.
It was on a particularly cold, nasty and rainy night when he pushed the switch to turn the new heater on for the very first time. It whirred to life, then belched out nasty white diesel smoke and filled the cabin with choking clouds of misery. We had to open every hatch and port, but the worst was having to live with the smell of diesel inside the cabin for a week until he had time to work on the thing again. After the initial starting incident, he finally got the heater up and running, but was very disappointed to find that it put out no heat whatsoever.
Poor Sweetie, he had worked so hard to install the darned thing, suffered the scraped knuckles, the miserable smell and then, after all that work, was heartbroken to find that there was no heat coming out of the vents. He was perplexed and I could offer no solace.
I don't remember if it was the same day, or a few days later when I was cleaning up the work site, that I noticed the vents on the outlet ducts were in the closed position. One quick flick of the switch and heat came pouring out in a great, wafting rush. We have appreciated the dry warmth the powerful Webasto provides ever since, although it does sound like a jet plane taking off.
I heartily recommend forced air heat on a boat, even though the installation may end in divorce. You may be alone, but at least you'll be warm.
