The GasOne Mini has a body made of plated steel and enameled steel. I've been using two standard butane stoves for years and they've been very reliable. The GasOne can do the same job without taking up as much space on the boat.
Photographs by the author
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Thank you for all the gear reviews. Interesting unit, size and dual fuel .
I use a butane stove aboard, heats fast but touchy at simmer as you mention
Small cabin boat: both fuels will settle in bilge and both give off carbon monoxide
Most butane stoves note they don’t work below 32 F, thus propane.
Curious if the propane adapter is available separately and would work with my current butane stove. I, too, have an accumulation of small propane bottles. It would be nice to use them up, and National Parks often have recycling for those bottles.
The propane adapter is available separately as a replacement part, but the it will only work with a stove that has been designed to accept it. In the detail photo above, you can see the brass fitting at the edn fo the hose threaded onto the mating part inside the stove. My older stoves, built for butane only, don’t have that part.
I like the size; it would fit in the old kitchen box inherited from my dad, whereas my butane stainless stove, a caterer’s stove, would not. Not sure, however, that I’ll buy another stove, with many miles to go on the stove I have now.
Tacos at 60 knots?
I’ve been waiting for someone to notice that little sign mounted above the fire extinguisher. When my kids, Nate and Ali, were in middle school, I took them out for a summer dinner sail in ALISON, my Caledonia yawl. I thought tacos would be an easy meal to prepare for a picnic under sail, but I hadn’t anticipated what it would be like to eat them. We had a good breeze, and with full sail set, ALISON charged through the chop. Assembling the tacos—a fragile crunchy shell, shredded lettuce, grated cheese, pulled chicken, and diced tomatoes, topped with salsa—was difficult enough in a constantly moving boat. Eating a taco with all of those slippery moving parts was impossible to do neatly. We would have to hold the taco upright to keep everything from spilling out and turn our heads sideway to take a bite. Do that as the bow dropped into a trough, and most of dinner would wind up on our shirt fronts and on the floorboards. Ali, with a skilled deadpan delivery but a poor grasp of nautical terminology, said “Great idea, Dad. Tacos at 60 knots.”
I thought it was only fair to warn others about the dangers of sailing aboard ALISON and had the plaque made.
Thanks for this helpful review, which led me to choose the Mini. I’m wondering about the cooling of the butane can with use. Does this cooling mean that cooking takes longer or about the same time? Or that more fuel is consumed, or less fuel? Good idea to swap a warmer can for a cooled can. In case there’s not a warmer can around, do you have any ideas to safely warm a cooled can?
I don’t know of a way around the cooling gas cylinders for the Mini while it’s in use. Compact backpacking stoves that have a wide canister as a base can be set in a pan of warm water. That won’t work with the Mini. You could remove the cylinder and put inside your coat and warm it with body heat.