[ birds calling ]
ERIN ROSS: The last place you'd expect to find
a roaring fire is a small wooden boat.
But these boaters are in love with crackling flames
and the smell of burning wood, and also steam whistles.
[ steamboat whistles ]
Every year, a group of steamboat enthusiasts
visits Rocky Point, crossing Klamath Lake
using technology that's hundreds of years old.
Al Dunlap says it's not a hobby for the impatient.
AL: We just don't get in and turn the key on.
In fact, there's no key.
It takes about 20 minutes to a half-hour
to build up pressure in the boiler so we can operate.
Then you have to warm up the engines,
open the drain cocks on the cylinders
so that when the steam goes into the engines
it condenses into water.
They have to get warmed up,
then you're pretty much ready to go.
We're gonna make it fire up quickly.
So you have to wonder, why not pick an easier way
to get on the water?
But for Stephanie Hylton,
there's just something special about steam.
It takes me half an hour just to get up steam.
When I was a kid, I'd go out in my dad's cabin cruiser, right?
And it was noisy and it was cold.
And the first time I saw a steamboat,
it was warm and quiet.
So it was like, this is what I want to do.
And it's interesting.
You don't even have to leave the dock.
[ pistons cranking ]
The process is what's interesting.
Getting there is frosting on the cake.
And getting there takes a lot of work:
stoking the fire, checking the gauges,
and literally blowing off steam.
[ steam hissing ]
[ steamboats whistling ]
When it's time to stop for lunch,
the boats even help with the cooking.
- It's a homemade espresso machine!
Whether it's boiling water or roasting hot dogs.
- Boiler dogs. [ chuckles ]
Hot dogs roasted in the fire.
This tradition was started by my father 40 years ago.
I don't think we've ever had a lunch that wasn't a hot dog
in 40 years on this boat.
It just makes sense.
Ketchup only.
There are roughly 75 steamboats like these across the Northwest
and more of them across the country.
Five made it to Klamath Lake this year,
and all of them have their own personalities.
- What did you get, a steam latte?
- I did.
- We have tea as well.
STEPHANIE: Of all the boats in the club,
there's no two that are the same.
They may have the same fiberglass hull,
but boy, from there on, they're different.
And the appealing thing to me about this hobby
is there's no one right way to do it.
Some folks buy their steamboats from other club members.
Some scrap together existing boats,
taking a boiler from one place and an engine from another.
[ engine clanking ]
Other steamboaters are like Al.
Al spent 30 years building his boat,
the Cheng-Tze.
AL: I did the woodwork,
the machining for the engine.
Everything about the boat I pretty much built.
I tried to copy what a yacht would have been like
in the 1880s, 1890s,
but I wanted to get it small enough
so I could trailer it.
The amazing thing about it is that it works.
And then there's the Uno, the oldest ship in the fleet.
The Uno started out as a sailboat
in the San Juan Islands over 100 years ago.
STEPHANIE: And this boat was the pickup truck of its day,
because there weren't roads on those islands.
So anything you wanted to haul, you hauled it by water.
I got her in '73,
and she was a steamboat from 1960 on.
Before that she had a career in the '20s
on both sides of the law during Prohibition.
ERIN ROSS: What does that look like?
How do you work both sides of the law?
Well, first you are an outlaw, and you are hauling alcohol
from Canada, picking it up on one of the outer islands
and bringing it into the mainland.
And then you get caught, and then the federales
figured out that it's a really fast boat,
and so they used it themselves.
She's old. She's pretty.
She leaks a little, you know,
and you would if you were 124 years old.
[ laughs ]
You know.
Actually, there must be somewhere
in this mechanism here.
ERIN ROSS: Where do you find parts for something like this?
You don't. You make them.
And that means you need to learn how,
which is the first thing that Bruce Jahn,
one of the group's newest members, did.
BRUCE: Within a week of my retirement,
I was a full-time student
at a machine shop program in a junior college nearby
so that I could learn how to use tools to make my own parts.
I love making the stuff like that.
My wife likes to say owning a steamboat
is the easy part.
Keeping it going is the hobby.
That's the wonders of a steam engine,
that you get to see all of that stuff going on.
You know, an engine in your car or motorcycle or airplane
or whatever, you can't see anything that's going on.
It's really a mechanical maze.
[ engine squeaking ]
Plus, I got a squeak,
which is pretty uncomfortable after a while,
but it'll go away.
They generally do.
They'll either go away, or the boat will explode
and we'll have to swim back.
STEPHANIE: We double-check each other.
We make sure the safety valve works.
You have to make sure that it holds pressure,
there's no leaks.
Well, you're dealing with pressure there,
100 pounds of pressure.
And it's hazardous, so you have to be smart.
[ laughter ]
- We're the steamer groupies.
It's not just the hobbyists
who are in love with steamboats.
- Camping at its best.
- We came here many years ago.
Steamboats were here.
We didn't even know it was going to happen.
And so it was magical at that point,
and we've been coming back ever since.
My favorite thing to do is to wake up at sunrise
and watch the sun rise over these steamboats.
It's just fabulous!
We're just like, okay, we're in the grandstands.
[ steam hissing ]
But there might not be steamboats on Klamath Lake
for much longer.
[ steamboat whistles ]
BRUCE: Because of the attrition of age,
we're losing some steamboaters.
And so even here, with the five steamboats we had,
10 years ago, there were a dozen.
And I don't know what to do about that,
because a group of steamboaters is more fun than just one.
[ laughter ]
It isn't so much that we really love the steamboat;
we really like these people.
Steamboaters are fun and wonderful people
no matter where you go.
- To steam power!
- Steam power and friendship.
- Cheers!
- Good times.
[ steamboats whistling ]