So, best beloved, where did we get up to? Gypsy had been launched and was giving us great joy. We steamed her all over the lakes and rivers and harbours on the north island of New Zealand and she behaved herself well. We took countless people for trips and infected many with the steamboat bug. Subsequent to the pictures in the last issue, I fitted her with a pram hood with laminated wooden bows and brass iron works. Khaki canvas completed the weather protection. We had a Windermere kettle and were never short of tea - "Oil Grey" was the favoured brew. I fitted a steam lance for tube cleaning but we never got as far as steaming shellfish with it.  Creature comforts drop off as the boat gets smaller but the hood was one of the better things. Funnily enough, there were few times that I used it. Several times when the seas were coming green over the bows and the coal and crew were getting wet and one momentous time when we couldn�t get her to produce steam. We were late autumn steaming on Lake Taupo - a big lake in the centre of the north island of New Zealand. The mountains to the south were snow covered and we were well hunkered down in the woolly jackets. Gypsy just wouldn�t steam. I blamed the coal quality, my stoking ineptness, whatever and I decided to head back for the slip. The moment we went about and had the wind astern, she picked up and I trigged to the cause of the problem. I put the hood up and this kept the icy blast off the boiler. She steamed well for the rest of the day. Funny, I thought the lagging was sufficient. Another advantage of the hood is that the cover can pick up on the erected hood giving more shelter and keeping the cover off the boiler if it is hot.  However, last episode, I quoted Arthur Ransome - he of "Swallows and Amazons" fame. The great children's author and sailor said that "a house is a poorly built boat that one would never go to sea in". This quote took my fancy because, after nearly ten years of steaming, we started building a new house. Well, boats get in the way of this sort of family activity (so wives say) and Gypsy was offered for sale. I felt sad as Gypsy left my life and took up in the hands of a fellow enthusiast in the Auckland Steam Engine Society - a bit like seeing an old girlfriend in the arms of another. At least we had money for the luxuries in a new house, such as the roof, windows etc. However, my time with Gypsy taught me a few things:

• It will take you a couple of years to get a steamboat together if you work hard. If you don't work at it, it will also take a couple of years not to get a steamboat. (Quote pinched from a recent WoodenBoat and altered somewhat.)

• A new hull is a dream compared with an old one. Less maintenance, no leaks. You can concentrate on the real issue - steaming.

• Steering gear needs to be reliable. Gypsy's cables slipped sometimes.

• A hood forward does give a bit of shelter when you�re punching into it or if it's raining.

• A compound engine is probably an unnecessary complication in a small boat. A twin simple is easier to live with if you must have multiple cylinders and reversing is easier.

• A Windermere kettle is so useful for warding off dehydration.

• A steam lance helps keep small fire tubes clean. You can steam shellfish too.

• You need a decent whistle.

• Coal firing is dirty.

ALONG  CAME  ROMANY  

That picture in the last issue with me standing proudly at the helm was taken on the Ngunguru River somewhat north of Auckland. Another boat with us, the steamer Romp carried the man who took that pic - and beside him was the well respected Whangarei boat builder Alec Baxter.  Alec was just ecstatic about steamboats - well, traditional boats in general. He took many pictures and videos of us and that night,I believe, he lofted out and laid the keel of his own steamboat. Work progressed on her from time to time as seafarers sought him out to repair their boats.  He had finally all but finished Romany's hull when he fell seriously ill. His boat was obviously not going to be needed and, before he died, he let me buy her in her unfinished state.

 

I had a suitable engine that we had used for a season in Gypsy while her Stuart was being fettled. A local boiler maker built a wet firebox vertical fire tube boiler to an old Stuart design that had been updated for the NZ Boiler Code (ie imperial dimensions con- verted to metric so the kids could understand it.)   I was finding the pipe work easy by now. It all came together quite nicely in the new garage at the now "almost completed" house. The house is still now "almost complete but more "almost completed" than when I bought Romany. The new boat was heavily built in the traditional way. She had a hardwood keel, Australian spotted gum ribs, thick NZ Kauri planking all held in place by copper nails and roves properly rivetted. To paraphrase David Kasanov of Wooden Boat magazine "A wooden boat is an assemblage of strangely-shaped pieces of wood so arranged as to retard the ingress of water" The coamings were varnished hardwood and she was just beautiful. Still is.

   She, like Gypsy has a transom stern and unlike her prdecessor, she has an outhung rudder and tiller. We steamed her up at home on her trailer as a trial run. We had thought that the new boiler would be a slow cooker, but in fact she started to sing like a kettle after 20 minutes and steam was showing on the clock; in 35 minutes we ran the engine, we blew the whistle, boiled the kettle and all was well. The following week she was launched at the annual March steam meeting. She leaked furiously keeping me busy with a bucket for an hour or so and then she magically stopped leaking and we went steaming.  It all went well. Funnily enough, she has never leaked since even after lengthy periods ashore. Romany had a pram hood forward, a decent mast, Windermere kettle, copper feedwater tank and hotwell. She has still to be fitted with a decent coal bunker, but all things in good time.  As with Gypsy, I had fitted a keel condenser but unlike Gypsy there is no feedwater heater. They say that the condenser should be about 10% of the heating surface of the boiler so I aimed for that. The condensate comes back a lot hotter than Gypsy�s and the condenser vacuum is less. I think a feedwater heater and more condenser area is really needed.   The boiler is a dream. The stoking is pretty laid back. The firebox is not that much bigger than Gypsy�s, but Gypsy has a dry firebox and many more fire tubes of smaller diameter.I have had few troubles with Romany over the years. The engine is reasonably good but has big steam ports which are efficient but necessitate a large slide valve. Romany's is not balanced and she can be hard to reverse when the full pressure is on the valve. The prop shaft seized one time and we needed a tow home. I had not noticed that the engine alignment was not good and as there was no flexible coupling, the prop shaft was tending to bow in the stern tube. It picked up and we had to thumb a tow back to port. I aligned the engine carefully and fitted a flexible coupling and thrust race. No further problems.

LESSONS  LEARNED

• Traditional planked hulls with ribs provide many nooks and crannies for coal

• and clinker to lodge. Harder to keep clean than a cold moulded.

• You probably can�t carry a sail when steaming - it affects the stack draft.

• You need a fitted coal bunker - old wooden nail boxes are not adequate.

• A feedwater heater gives better economy. The boiler pressure doesn't drop so fast when you are feeding hard.

• There is usually an abundance of steam when you don't want it.

• An injector will always "quiet" a boiler quickly when it's producing a lot of steam.

• Most of the heat transfer in the boiler is at the wet firebox and lower tubeplate. Big tubes help the draft, don't clog easily and do not necessarily spoil heat transfer which probably happens low down in the tubes anyway.

• We had a stainless stern tube and there was little clearance between the shaft and the tube. A little engine mis-alignment caused the shaft and tube to fret and ultimately pick up and seize. The old copper stern tubes never used to do this with a bronze shaft.

• Coal firing is still dirty but smells good and is fun.

• Some of the guys in Steamboats and Modern Steam Launches were great people.