Maintenance
Every two hours or so, Al would add oil to the drippers to lubricate the crosshead. At the same time, he would put a little oil on the valve crosshead and the dogs of the slip eccentric.
Also every two hours or so, he would add an extra gallon of makeup water to the system. Since we didn’t have any through-hulls, he would dip water from overboard.
Once a day, he would grease the eccentric strap.
Each morning, he would clean one or two gallons of ashes out of the ashpit.
We started the trip with a new large Teel pump as a feedpump.
Although the pump worked very well, the 1.1:1 ratio of the feedpump to
the engine pumped excess water. An extra gallon of water would be pumped
into the boiler at 50 pounds pressure in two minutes because of the size
of the feedpump and this ratio.
Because we filtered the feed water and because of the excess volume
of water being pumped, Al ended up having to put two NAPA 3003 fuel filters
in parallel. Since he used his spare for the second filter, we searched
for NAPA or WIX filter dealers several times on our voyage. We found
that Purolater filters melt at about 140 degrees. The water in the
hot well was approximately 140 degrees.
Repair
Steering was the biggest change we made en route. After a steering
cable was overlapping, causing steering to the right to be difficult, Al
moved the turnbuckle and spring from under the stern deck to the starboard
side of the steamboat. Before we put the deck on, adjusting it had
been easy. This was our first long trip on the steamboat with the
deck on and it was difficult to adjust the steering mechanism. At
the same time, Al fixed a problem where the rudder could turn 360 degrees,
causing confusion to the helmsman.