There are many people (mainly males –it's a genetic problem. That y chromosome thing, just accept it) who want to have a steamboat. There are several options here:

• Buy one
• Build one
• Steal one
• Borrow one

Gypsy three up at Ngunguru 1991

Of these, the last has a lot going for it : Borrowing one relieves you of the onerous responsibility of ownership, of maintenance, of the ongoing expense associated with boat ownership in general. The old saw "A boat is a preferably wood-lined hole in the water that you shovel money into" (my italics). Not owning your own boat and going out on some other poor soul's one means that while he is cleaning up after a day's sailing, polishing the brightwork, sorting out the mechanical defects list and making good the knocks and scratches, you can hop off home and relax for the rest of the day.

Ownership is fulfilling. You get a lot of use of your boat. By this I do not just mean actual physical use . At odd times in the day, you can use your boat just by thinking of it. When you wake up at dead of night in a cold sweat because of some tedious daily occurrence (be it business or other) you can imagine your prize possession and all the fun you will have with it one day when time allows.

This is why ownership, building or running your own boat beats the other options hands down because nobody can take it away from you. It is yours alone to use and dream about as you see fit, and pride of possession is paramount

So how do you go about getting your boat? It starts off as a dream and many people –called "dream steamers" – never get past this point. That's ok, sometimes the dreaming of the acquisition is the best part. The reality is a let down for these folk.

So let's consider how to get you steaming in a boat of your own.

IMPORTANT DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

There are three guiding principles in steamboat design and, rightly or wrongly, I have laid them out as laws:

FIRST LAW: "Steam boating is primarily a time-occupying activity" Do not waste time trying to speed the process up.

SECOND LAW: "Fun derived from a boat is inversely proportional to the waterline length." Maybe you might have more fun with a model boat

THIRD LAW: "As it becomes more efficient, a steam  plant becomes less interesting"

This is Durham's Inverse law of Thermodynamics which was propounded a long, long time ago by a wise man Bill Durham who was pioneer editor of the first steamboating magazine SLOW Bell and then Steamboats and Modern Steam Launches. The latter is still in print and readily available in bound form. You should get a copy.

To give an example of Durham's Law : By far the the most efficient steamplant of all has to be the nuclear power plant. Steam is made by nuclear reaction in a reactor hidden away from your gaze swaddled in a protective sheild. The steam produced by the heat goes in a turbine and that's it. Virtually you see nothing but a mass of lagged insulated shielded machinery. Would you give it house room? I don't think so

So if you want efficiency, go nuclear or put a little diesel engine in your boat and just go places. If you still want a steamboat, let's get down to reality in this process, lets consider the components.

HULL

There are several parameters here. Because you have a powerplant that is unlikely to be producing a lot of power, the hull is best if it slips through the water with little disturbance. Because of the lack of disturbance, you are not wasting scarce horsepower generating a huge bow and sternwave. You will have noticed that the old time steamboats were long and thin and frequently had a counter stern. Now, best beloved, you stray from these desiderata at your peril!

The counter (or as our American cousins call it a fantail) has a good purpose. As the old hull gathers weigh, the sternwave flows up the counter increasing the immersion of the propeller. A propeller works better in denser water and the deeper, the denser. Anyway, if nature gave ducks a stern like that, there must have been good reason.

ENGINE

Ideally, you want an engine that you can see all the parts of, and one which revs slowly. Unfortunately, even a relatively slow moving steamer is going to be a blur of moving parts. As they get bigger, the individual parts appear to move slowly, but yours is likely to be small so live with it, it is going to be in the rev range 250 – 500 rpm. At these sorts of speeds, you will have a lot of torque so your propeller is going to be of big diameter and coarse pitch. Remember:

• Dimeter gives you power
• Pitch gives you speed.

So here you have a small difficulty, most motor boat hulls have a propeller aperture for a small diameter high revving propeller. You won�t find too many steamboat hulls but they are recognisable for the large propeller aperture. Early motorboats also had to deal with the low revs high torque issue.

People think in terms of step up gearing to allow a small propeller, but this then becomes an added complication. Why not just start with the right hull and do it properly?

BOILER

This is the most interesting part of your boat and there are several variations all of which have their rabid devotees. They are as follows –getting progressively heavier and containing more water and (probably) both steam and reserve.

• Monotube or flash –essentially here is one long hot tube making the steam

• Watertube –the water goes through the tubes the fire is outside of these

• Firetube –the fire goes through the tubes

In addition, there are various firing methods again with their (again rabid) followers who would use no other than their chosen method.

• Solid –wood or coal etc
• Liquid –oil be it kerosene, petrol, heavy oil, biofuel or recycled cooking oil.
• Gas –propane butane LPG

Again, hark back to Durhams law, shovelling coal is (to me) a lot more fun than twiddling valves on an oil or gas line. But, hey, whatever turns your crank.

The proponents of the water tube and flash boilers extol the speed with which steam can be raised. This is all very well, but if you want to be off and away, why not just get an aluminium dinghy with a super efficient Honda outboard? Why muck about with steam? My present boat can be brought into steam in 20 -40 minutes. That time is spent in a solemn ritual of relaxation, contemplation, oiling the engine, pumping the bilge and polishing the brass. This latter activity is not one of my great activities as friends will attest.

CREATURE COMFORTS

This is whatever space you have left in the ship for sitting down and relaxing as you steam along or for apres steam. It follows that the bigger the ship, the better the creature comforts but watch for complications setting in.

CASE STUDIES : LET ME TELL YOU A STORY

This is about my first steamer Gypsy. She had a long metamorphosis and it goes like this in the retelling.

I was infected by steam at age 3-4 years old when I saw my first traction engine. 20 odd years later, with a well established steam addiction and living on the edge of a tidal bay, I thought that a steamboat would amalgamate my hobbies into one focus. I had a 12� clinker hull and started to make a steam engine for it. It was a twin cylinder to a nice little design by K N Harris (K N Harris Model Stationary and Marine Seam Engines London Percival Marshall & Co Ltd Revised ed 1964 p147).using Stuart Turner cylinder castings 2.25 x 2.A design for a vertical coal fired fire tube boiler produced by Graeme Wilkinson was built and found to be too heavy and big for the hull. I scoured the area for a suitable hull. All were too rotten or had too small a propeller aperture too big too small etc. I briefly had Billy Boy -a 24' clinker hull made by Ralph Sewell as a steamer in the '60s. She was just right but too big for engine and boiler. Shortly after, I bought a Stuart Model 6 compound engine and fitted it with Stuart 6A feed and water pumps. This, together with the boiler was just right for a hull about 17' long. I was sick of looking at dodgy old boats that were just not right for my purpose and likely to be leaky old  expensive wood-lined holes in the water. I wanted a good hull that did not leak.

So I set about finding a suitable design. Designs for little steamers were quite rare back then and one finally came to light in the pages of  a local traditional boats news sheet. The lines were taken off a 17' clinker boat kept at the Auckland Islands (a group of barren islands in a very wild area south of NZ) and a local Auckland boatbuilder David Jackson built her for me in 1985. Everything was just right. She was launched one damp blowy day in 1986 and served me faithfully for 10 year until I sold her to a fellow addict. She is still going strong.

So, obtaining your steamboat can be a journey and is fraught with frustrations. Just remember a house is a boat so poorly built that you would never go to sea in it.... (continued)

GYPSY when first launched.