| In the past, there have been a few true believers who owned steamboats and kept them running long after everyone else had gone on to internal combustion engines. The last one in Auckland was finally eviscerated in the 1960s and her mechanicals put in the local Museum of transport and Technology. In the late 60s, there were several enthusiasts who equipped old hulls with steam engines. Jack Ward in Keriheri built up with Iris a 28′ lifeboat with a water tube boiler and a Simpson Strickland engine. Alas, Iris is now rather derelict-looking. Les Bodle made up his own triple expansion engine and scotch boiler and installed in a newish 30′ hull. John Hannah put a Simpson Strickland Quad in his boat Greenbank in the 70s. Percy Ginders put a Mumford compound in his boat Romp and Russell Mcfarlane put a venerable locally made Seager tandem compound in a very heavy steel workboat. Alan Brimblecombe resurrected the old steamer Puke at Paeroa with a homebuilt single and vertical boiler. |  |
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I had been on the sideline in the Auckland Steam Engine Society for quite a long time and decided to build my own steam boat. I had what I thought to be a suitable hull -a 12′ clinker dinghy witha 4 hp Stuart inboard. The difficulty as always is that there is usually not enough room to swing a suitably big propeller. Also she leaked considerably.After a lot of consideration, I decided to had a new hull built but a local boatbuilder and Gypsy was the result. She was 18′, double diagonal cold moulded and glassed. guaranteed not to leak and with a good large aperture for the prop. She was launched in 1986 and was a rousing success. She hada vertical firetube boiler coal fired and a Stuart number 6 compound. The doghouse was put on by a suibsequent owner.
Wayne Larsen had at the time been building a range of small steam engines and found a fine old 20′ hull Victoria. He installed one of his delightful twin simple engines and a boiler like Gypsy’s (now replaced by a wet firebox version) She is a very well sorted fast little boat.
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| We were steaming on a tidal estuary just north of here and made the acquaintance of Alec Baxter builder of very traditional boats in Whangarei. Alex built the noble little steamer Romany but died before she was launched. I bought her and completed the engineering. She runs well and we love her. |  |
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There are now getting to be quite a lot of small steamboats in New Zealand and we get to see more and more at our meetings. Being smaller and easily trailerable, they are taken quite long distances to take in the traditional small boat meetings that are now taking place in New Zealand.One of the newer boats on the scene is Misty seen below on Lake Taupo at the launching of S L Alice in 2001
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