Down to the wire

Things can be right stressful sometimes.

Take these new cookers we bought. Brand spanking new New World freestanding gas cookers. Nice looking things in Silver, shiny, clean and new. Did I mention that they are new?

Well, these new cookers failed a boat safety test on Thursday on a boat that's due out on holiday on Friday. The oven burners were producing an orange flame which our gas/boat safety examiner found to be totally unacceptable. We checked the oven jet was clear and also checked it against the manufacturers spec to ensure it was the right jet for LPG. Sure, it was, the oven is only designed to run on LPG.

We had two cookers, one on the boat, the other in store, still in it's wrapping. So, we manhandled the failing one out of the boat, put in the new one and the same fault.

At this stage, there's less than 24 hours before this boat is due to go out and we've got no cooker on board. The stress levels were rising.

A phone call to the manufacturers and the lady couldn't promise me that I'd be seen before the bank holiday. Joy. Now the options were simple; find a cooker that worked and fitted or... Well, that was it really.

We had an old cooker in store but it didn't have Flame Failure Devices on the burners so would have been illegal to refit after having one with FFDs. Tony Urwin from Banks Boats (our Gas and BSS man) got on the phone around some yards as did I. Between us, we located a couple of cookers and it was one of my neighbouring yards that came to my rescue with an old Stoves Vanette, complete with FFDs. It was a bit battered but after removing a panel or two, a couple of blows with a rubber mallet on an anvil soon straightened it out. Then it was out with the new and in with the old and with Tony (pulling out all the stops on his day off) due back with us at 3pm just an hour before the boat was due on holiday, we got it in. Tony arrived on time, tested the cooker and wrote out the Boat Safety paperwork.

In the mean time, the Stoves engineer had actually arrived and was saying that these cookers do burn with an orange flame and that it was pretty normal and had passed the tests like that with no evidence of sooting up. That was until he looked at the two new units we had; he too said that he wouldn't pass them as safe and that we really should take them back for a refund! Later, after he had spoke with his HQ, he explained that the cookers are quite normal to burn as they did during his tests and that the manufacturer could provide a document proving it! Now, we seem to be faced with a dilemma - keep the wretched things and have to produce a bit of paper each year to try and convince a gas engineer that it burning wrong is normal and that he's talking out of his hat when he says he's not going to pass it or try for a refund.

I'll be on the phone to the supplier on Tuesday.....