Now that it's cold outside, we've identified our two favorite appliances for weathering winter weekends.

On the left is a wood stove. Yes, it's small, but filled with Wood Pellet Fuel, it rocks. We use a long, metal soup spoon to put in about 2 spoon fuels of pellets every half hour. There's a trick to getting it burning and then closing the flue and air intake to let the coals just bake slowly. We're working on trying to control the airflow properly to provide heat for a longer period of time.

This, of course, works everywhere, since it doesn't require power.

On the right of the wood stove are three knobs for the reverse-cycle heat pump . 16,000 BTU's of heating (until the water gets below about 40°F). It only works on shore power. But it makes the main saloon and forward cabin toasty warm. The aft cabin is still pretty chilly.

And yes, we ripped the heat pump out of the aft cabin just last week. We think a $52 Guest Foldaway Fan will circulate warm air into the aft cain nicely. With less plumbing and less wiring.

When it was 34° this morning, the heat pump managed to crank the cabin up to a delightful mid-60's pretty quickly.

While it stays chilly (and we wait for our new fuel filters) these are our two favorite appliances.