Prospective steam launch builder in West Virginia

[scottinwv]

Hello,

I am hoping to find an engine and boiler and start a steam launch in the next couple of years.

Inspired by "The African Queen", the perfect "Effie Mae" would be a little shorter at 26 feet, cedar stripped with fiberglass inside and out instead of steel, Honduran mahogany trimmed (200 board feet in basement), white oak keel and frames, canopy, vertical fire tube and compound engine.

I'm hoping to do long distance river cruising on it, possibly 200-250 mile weekends.

As I am new to steam, any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. From my basic understanding, it would take approximately 15 hp to reach a hull speed around 7 mph.

Scott Denning
Huntington, WV

[Lopez Mike]

Welcome to the forum!! You will find people on here with a lot of experience and knowledge.

What you have in mind can be a great project. A couple of things come to mind. Seven knots seems pretty fast. You will burn a lot less fuel if you back off and smell the stack and the roses. Which brings up another thought. That many miles in a weekend is maybe reaching for it as to carrying enough fuel.

It perhaps can be done with oil firing. I doubt that you could do it with wood. Propane, I dunno.

Others will chime in.

When you have specific questions, be sure and open a new thread in an appropriate area of the forum.

Good luck,

Mike

[scottinwv]

Thanks for the reply, Mike.

Hopefully 5.5 to 6 mph would be doable as a cruise speed with 7 as top speed. I'm assuming a compound would get more "miles per ton" of firewood. For the long multi-day trips I would like to do, I would be pre-stocking firewood or coal every 50 or 60 miles, so one 500 pound refueling at lunch and one at the end of the day.

The size of the boat will be dependent on what engine I can find. I like the lines of the Selway-Fisher Indian Runner, but would like something about 5 feet longer.

I'm still a noobie at this, so plans could change quite a bit before actually starting.

Scott

[Lopez Mike]

I too am a newbie about hulls. The one I have now is sort of like the people in the town of Lake Wobegon on the radio show Prairie Home Companion. "The women are strong and the men are good looking."

It gives every indication of having been built as a mockup of a hull for Hollywood filming. Strong but not intended for serious use. Don't get me wrong, I'll fix the ugliest things and use it until I decide what else to do. But as it sits, I would not call attention to it.

There are several moderately divergent views of steam boating. There is the high tech group who spend a fair amount of time trying to raise the thermal efficiency of their boats from dreadful to simply awful. There is another group who find that building the boat is fun and interesting but once operating, spend much time planning the next, and usually larger, vessel. There are many amongst us who aren't that interested in actually getting scalded and oil spattered but find the group entertaining as a sort of abnormal psychiatric study. And there are those, like me, who subscribe to the Water Rat view that simply messing about in a quiet, mechanically interesting boat as enough in itself.

I think there is a bit of all of these qualities in every person on the forum.

Mike

[dhic001]

Hi Scott,
Welcome to the forum. Interesting thinking, and certainly worth exploring further. However, I would caution expecting to be able to comfortably go too far in a small steamboat in a weekend. I've donbe a fair few miles in 25-40 foot steamlaunches, and while the boats will keep going, you won't. By their nature, steamboats are hot and tiring to work with, even the semi-automated oil fired ones. While the vast majority of my trips have been coastal passages, some have been in lovely glassy conditions, but all of them have been tiring. A 200 mile weekend would be fine if you were doing 10 knotsa on automatic controls, but you won't be doing that in a 26 footer. My recommendation would be to limit yourself to a maximum of 10 hours running, ie 55 miles at 5.5mph, that way you will be fit enough to do another day, more than that and you'll be dead by the end of the weekend.

On other notes, keep your boat long and fine, so its easily driven. Get machinery that is slightly larger than you need, so you have plenty of power in reserve, and in particular a big lazy boiler is dramatically easier on a long run than a boiler that has to be nurtured all the way. Within the next week I'm going to be doing 1, and possibly 2 delivery voyages of 44 miles. One in a 37 footer with a very big lazy boiler, the other in my 25 footer with a marginal boiler. The first run will be fast and easy, the second if it happens will be much slower and far more intense.

Hope that gives you some things to think about.

Daniel

[87gn@tahoe]

Welcome to the forum Scott.

Your motivation to continue on long trips will be proportionate to how comfortable and stressful your boat is.

My 22' x 6' boat, with a liquid fired monotube and automatic controls, is very easy to run, almost to the point of boredom. Se's very quiet also. Unfortunately the seats are uncomfortable (no padding really), so after about 6 hours, you're ready to disembark. At 9mph, that's 54 miles. Kerosene is not cheap though.

My father's 21'x7' launch has comfortable seats, and a liquid fired VFT that can be easily "tuned" to steam for hours without touching anything. Unfortunately, the hiss from the steam atomizing burner is draining and after 8 hours, you're spent. At 6mph, that's 48miles. She runs filtered waste oil, so fuel is free.

I am a huge proponent of liquid fuels as they're stored easily and more efficiently, they don't leave crumbs, cinders, or ash everywhere, can make a much cleaner boat if one is careful with spills, fire is easily modulated for load, and at the end of the day when you're tired and want to go home you can come steaming into port with a full fire, dock, and walk away. You don't have to wait for your fire to burn down, or come in with a minimal fire and limited pressure reserve.

Firetubes, as you probably already know, are much more steady steamers than watertubes, and generally have much more steam reserve in case of a flame-out.

[fredrosse]

Throughout most of the last century, almost all naval and merchant ships were steam powered. At the beginning of that period, most used solid fuel (coal or wood) in the boilers. Early into the century, most changed from solid fuel to oil firing. They must have had good reasons, the extra expense of oil firing was clearly justified by the inconvenience, time, and labor difficulties of solid fuel firing.

The romance of solid fuel firing does not last that long for many of us.

Wesley, what kind of oil burner do you use that is silent? Can you supply details?

[DetroiTug]

Fred, Now that's a bow wave.. Lots of horsepower there.

Scott, Welcome to the forum and good luck with your project. Same here on the miles per day, after about 40-50 miles and 8-10 hours, the crew is pretty much spent.

-Ron

[farmerden]

I would think you could do the distance.Just as I traveled 1000 miles on the hiway with a camper on the family vacation.Looking back it was an endurance event and the kids usually were sick within a week! I took the family to Salt Spring Island in the "Steam Queen" one summer-4 hr to get there ,4 hr to get back,leaving about 45min for the wife to shop! I had a ball and don't understand her problem! Next time we'll go one day and come home the next day. And I'm sure the rest of the group will agree,you will be drained at the end of the day! Maybe it's the sun baking down on my head! Maybe a canopy would help. And as automatic as the engine and boiler have become I can't pull myself away for long periods to see what the rest of the world is doing.Don't get me wrong,it's exactly what I want.But if you think steaming is a sixpack and a sunny day get a d-iesal! The beer will be warm before you get a chance to drink it! BUT if you are a tinkerer you will love it! -SO welcome aboard!! Den
If I throw out all the negatives early then you'll have nothing left but the positives when you launch!!

[scottinwv]

The long distance trips would be more of a challenge or endurance type event and not the normal outing. A normal outing would be a few hours and possibly 10 - 15 miles total. The long distance trips are the reason I would like at least a 25 foot boat. I would eventually like to do the entire length of the Ohio River (970 miles total) in four or five stages and the Kanawha River (94 miles) in one or two stages. For the long distance days I would plan on having three or four passengers and another operator along so there would be a little time to relax. A fair bit of open space and a full canopy would be a must.

I might be a little crazy, I'll soon be starting a Whitehall or wherry rowboat to do the length of the Kanawha River. That would be at least three days if the current is good, four if it isn't.

I've learned an extreme amount already from the forum, and really appreciate any suggestions/ideas.

Scott