Wow Nick, I'm very happy for you and Jeff that you were onboard and didn't suffer from much worse.
Happenings like this almost stop you from leaving your boat, as if something like this would have happened while you were away it could have ended with a long process of discussions with you insurers.
I know the feeling, as I've had a fire on my boat too, that happened 3 winters ago, it was a very cold night, and even with the thermostat of my diesel fired CH set at 12°C for the night, I could hear the heating come one very often.
Around 3am I smelled a strange smell, and first thought that my neighbour was burning damp wood in his woodburner, which he often did, but it became so bad that I had to have a look.
When I opened the door of my sleeping cabin, I couldn't see a thing the whole boat was full of smoke, and I could hear wood burning, so my first thought was to call the fire-brigade, but then I realised that it would take at least 20 mins before they would get to me, and I remembered their actions with a boat on fire at the town quay, where they went in with axes to get to the fire, doing a lot of damage that wouldn't have been necessary, and they sprayed huge amounts of water inside, so much that the boat sunk, and that stopped the fire.
As I didn't what to take that risk, I didn't call them and did what is always said not to be done, I opened the door right next to the fire which was around the chimney pipe of my CH that was/is hidden away in a nice looking wooden box
, I had to do that, as I couldn't breath the air inside full of smoke.
Then I filled about 10 bucket of riverwater from overboard and threw them against the box at ceiling height as that was where it was burning, of course the very first thing I did was switch the heating off.
After all these buckets of water, I didn't hear the wood burning sound anymore, and the I remover the grill of the lid of the box to see a bit more and saw the wood at ceiling level still smauldering which I managed to stop by emptying several fillings of a spray bottle, then with a saw I cut through the wooden construction to take it all down.
The culprit was the chimney pipe where it went through the roof into a stainless steel dubbel walled pipe, I'd always thought, stupidly without ever checking, that the whole pipe was made of stainless, which worked out not to be the case as below the roof it was galvanised and rusted away, so in the freezing cold when the heating came one much too often it burned away the insulation in the end, followed by the wood.
I had to sit in the cold (very cold !) for 4 days, until the stainless pipes that I'd ordered to replace the rest of the CH chimney pipe with arrived, all envelopped in lots of exhaust lagging which smelled-and smoked terribly for several days, I suppose that that was because of the glue of the lagging.
The boat would surely have gone up in flames if I wouldn't have been onboard, all that's left of this happening now is bad memories that come back if I'm lucky enough to dose off at night, even with all the more recent misery here, I can't forget about it.
Evenso, I think that you, Jeff and myself can say that we've been lucky.
Peter.