A wood stove on a sailboat
Fika now has a Dickinson Newport solid fuel stove that can burn anything from driftwood to coal. Cutting a hole in the deck for the chimney taught us something about how she was built.
This fall we installed a Dickinson Newport solid fuel stove in Fika’s main cabin, on the starboard bulkhead next to the main mast.
Why a stove
Right now we heat Fika with a Webasto-style diesel heater, and diesel prices in California keep climbing. The Newport burns solid fuel, anything from driftwood to coal, so it gives us a way to stay warm that doesn’t depend on the price at the fuel dock. It also makes the cabin a very cozy space.
Through the deck
The stove sits centered on a stainless heat shield and runs a 3 inch chimney up through a deck fitting with an H cap on top. Cutting the hole for that fitting answered a question about Fika’s construction: her deck is double cored.
Any hole through a cored deck is a path for water into the core, so I didn’t just bed the fitting and call it done. I cored out the hole, potted it with thickened epoxy, and built an epoxy leveling ring on top for the fitting to sit on. Water that gets past the fitting meets solid epoxy instead of foam or wood.
Safety first
There’s a CO alarm in the main cabin, and more are going in around the boat. Fresh air comes from a dorade vent about 6 feet forward of the stove.
With that, the stove is fully installed.