For starters, we’ve had some upgrades to our cooking facilities aboard. A couple months ago, we added a brand new Magma Catalina 2 Infrared grill. We had a special relationship with our favorite marine store and got a great deal on this sweet little unit. We’ve been barbecuing all sorts of delicious things aboard Nauticarazi since.
But that is not the point of this story. We have much bigger proverbial fish to fry. Sunday night, we had a near catastrophic failure aboard as the galley stove fell out of service (and out of favor of the captain) aboard. Dinner was not served.
The old Force10 stove has come to the end of its useful (to us) life. It has stopped working except for one burner. The ignition died all together, so that one burner needed to be lit by match. We briefly talked of hauling it out, breaking it down, cleaning it up, sourcing parts, and rebuilding it, as that was a possible, but time-consuming option. In the end, and thanks to a great deal from our favorite marine store once again, we decided to replace it for both expediency and convenience.
It took some research but since we weren’t eating dinner on Sunday night, we considered our options. We were really hoping to upgrade to a Dickenson Marine stove, as they are highly regarded in the cruising world. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. As it turns out, there is only one stove that fits into our allotted space in the galley. The goal was to get back up cooking, not repair an old stove and DEFINITELY NOT do kitchen construction for a model upgrade.
We assume that the old stove is original to the boat, so we feel 36 years is a decent service life of the old stove and Force10 still manufactures the our Force10 XM stove model: An exact replacement with a few upgrades! The burners are a new design, the oven door has a window, the oven and broiler are thermostat controlled, the oven interior has more rack options, there are fiddles for the top to hold pots on undear way, and it’s shiny! Beacon got it next day for us and the installation was fast and easy. It works better than expected and we are thrilled!
Now we are cooking with gas… again.