You think something you do will be OK, then comes a rude awakening (literally!) & you realise that that something you did could actually have killed you!
Very sobering.
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, putting a full ashcan fresh from the stove underneath it after I'd put the empty one in & already locked up for the night, plus it was going to rain overnight, so didn't really want to put the full ashcan outside, wasn' t the best idea I've ever had. Sure enough, less than an hour & a half later, just before midnight, the CO alarm went off.
Having opened the front doors & boosted the ventilation through the boat to clear the air, it dawned within my befuddled brain what the source of the CO was - the full ashcan sitting under the stove gently smouldering away, giving off CO into the confines of the boat instead of up the stove flue as it would when sealed inside it.
So, what seemed like a good idea at the time could have killed everyone on board but for a fully functioning CO alarm. I wouldn't mind, but the omnipotent one swore she could smell the ashcan, however I thought she was just reacting to the dust. Now I've heard that some people get quite a whiff off an ashcan, but I've never experienced this myself. I don't know what this means, but I will take her concerns very seriously in future when she says she can smell something funny, no matter what it is.
Let my experience serve as a timely reminder to all of you, before winter truly sets in, that you can't treat anything relating to your stove with casual indifference.
Do I feel stupid? Yes. Should I seriously consider changing my name to Richard Head? Probably.
Stay warm, but most importantly, stay safe folks.