Well... this was the first voyage of the SC No Rush.
On Saturday August 14th, 2004 at about 12:30 at the boat launch in Nehaelm in Oregon my boat touched water for her first steaming!
What follow are pictures of the NWSS 2004 steam meet in Wheeler Oregon.
When we first got there we had to prep the boat (which included getting the seats attached and the engine mounted), and that took about an hour to prep, then I got steam up before we even launched it (as I didn't want to wait long at the docks).
While we were waiting our turn the sheriff pulled in behind us waiting to put their boat in.

Next we had to launch the boat,

we never realized how heavy it was until it came time to actually launch it...

And here I am putting around all alone attempting to dock with a fairly swift current

But I did find one important fact: this boat almost literally turns on a dime! Once the skegs dig in there is no stopping it!

Next was the 2 or so mile trip down river to Wheeler, my grandpa in Little Smoker took the lead to help weave our way through the muddy areas
Accompanying me on this voyage was my girlfriend Morgaine Andersen and my father Harry Miller (with the three of us plus equipment the motor mount was slightly dragging in the water)

As you can see in this pic, i still have a fair amount of board left before i run into problems (I figure that 3" more and i would be!)

Here's another side pic of me heading down to Wheeler

Here's a pic of my bow, as you can see more clearly I still have some free board before I have to worry.

In this pic, Dad and Morgaine are on one side and I'm on the other, and the boat is still level (for the most part)

Another pic of me with another steam boat seeing the new (and weird) sight!

And the last pic before we get into the thick of the fishing boats, with Morgaine as the lookout, me at the helm, and Dad firing and feeding the boiler.

Once I docked, and fielded well over 2 dozen questions while shutting down the boiler, we called it a day and left to see the sights and attend the meeting.
The next day we awoke to a beautiful sight:




When we finally got down to the boat we found out that not everyone tied their boats tightly enough to combat the change in the tides...

While we were getting ready for the trip back, Dad spotted the sheriff again and I still needed to get my reg numbers onto my boat (I was going to do it the night before, but was to tired to and forgot)
So my girlfriend and I went to the tent and started to apply the stickers:

Then I got ready for the steam back up river to the ramp.

This time Dad and I were the only ones on the boat, we also took off about 50 lbs of equipment that we didn't need.
The idea was to see how fast we could get the boat going, I think we were doing about 2-3 knots at times (about 80-100 psi)


In all it took about 45 minutes to make the 2 mile run (which wasn't too terribly bad considering this was only the second run under it's own power)

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