Cubic Mini Grizzly installed--Wow!

 Since we've had Aeolus, she has had a Force 10 kerosene heater that I have kept going and suffered through. It was obnoxiously loud, made the boat smell like kerosene, and put out only enough heat to slowly heat the boat about 30 degrees above outside temperature and so in the winter, to a tepid place. 

While I have pursued endless other boat projects, I have fantasized about what I would replace that old Force 10 with many times. Finally, this winter, I read about the Cubic Mini stoves and found my answer. After considering a new kerosene stove from Dickinson, I decided to go the wood route since we cruise in the great wooded PNW. 

The Grizzly. You can see the fiberglass blanket for heat protection. 

This won't be a full installation story because honestly it was quite straightforward. You get all the equipment with your purchase and just have to make sure you have the proper amount of vent pipe and top cap you need. On Aeolus, since I already had a kerosene heater, I didn't have to do any changes to the deck hole or fittings since they were already of the specified size for the Cubic system. 

On a Gulf 32, the best and only place if you have a dining table on the starboard side, is to mount it on the port bulkhead. The Cubic Mini instructions specify how much draft you need, but you will find that you can fudge this down a bit and do fine. The challenge is heat radiation, and rather than doing some major surgery to my cushions for fire hazard, I decided to purchase some fiberglass welding blanket and lay this over the cushion and have found it works great. The fiberglass blanket gets hot, but with a small air gap between it and the cushion, the cushion does not. 

I've been burning some local highly condensed wood sawdust logs that are made here in Western WA. They are super dense, and pack a lot of btu in their space. This is important since storing wood is an issue on a small boat. I am using two plastic bins with sealing lids to store the wood, and bought an empty paint can to store and transport the ashes. 

Let me tell you, it is a transformation of the boat. It puts out so much heat that we actually talked about turning it down! We took our fleece off! We took our hats off! It was warm. Not only radiating warmth, but temperature warm. The boat was 76 degrees and felt like 86. It's a game changer. We've always sailed year round, and with special love of winter trips, but now, it will be so deeply comfortable that we will find even more joy in our journeys. Our winter swims will be easier to contemplate! And it is a dry heat. So deeply dry. The little thermoelectric fan does a great and nearly silent job of moving air around. I wish I had made this change years ago and thank Cubic Mini for making a solid and functional little heater!