This week we ran out of gas, which would not have been an issue had we not connected a newly filled 5kg bottle just a few days earlier. First thought is that we have a gas leak. That would be worrisome in any situation but especially when living on a fibreglass boat which would easily burn down. In a monohull sailboat LPG gas collects in the bilges, the lowest point in the boat. So first course of action is to use the manual bilge pump to vacate any gas from the boat. Using the electric bilge pump could cause a spark which is the last thing we want.

As our boat is our home: we live, eat, sleep on it, and not being able to cook is a big issue. Luckily my philosophy regarding any system on board is to have at least one backup and preferably more. For our gas stove that backup is a small paraffin stove which until now we used while camping. At one point we tried out a paraffin stove as a replacement for our gas stove but leaks and other issues made us abandon that effort. I did get the small liquid fuel stove which works with paraffin as well as petrol, just in case.

So the last few days we’ve been using that portable stove for our cooking and tea making. We’ve since figured out where the gas leak is and we’ll have to replace the gas stove. The stove that was on the boat when we bought it (a bit over a year ago) also had a leak, which is why we got the paraffin stove. When that one didn’t work out we got another second hand lpg stove from a fellow yachtie in Hout Bay. So now we’re looking for our fourth stove already.

Since it isn’t easy to find any yacht specific things here in Walvis Bay or anywhere in Namibia and we only have a week left on our visas we’ll look for a replacement stove once we’re in Brazil. We’ll need to look at securing the little paraffin stove so that we can use it while underway. And just to be sure we’ll adjust our provisioning to include plenty of food we don’t need to cook.

As always while sailing/cruising we’ll have to make a plan. I think we’re doing quite well in terms of figuring things out and I’m glad we figured out the leak before it became a bigger issue.