My nephew was our third crew member and passenger, which was very welcome!
We had the Wingfoot Lake Ohio DNR Watercraft Officer come and pay us a visit. He was very reasonable, "I've been working here for 20 years and this is a new one to me! "
I just explained that we had all the safety equipment and that it was a steamboat with an old engine and a new boiler.
Wingfoot lake is in Summit County, which is adjacent to Medina County. So we heard the story of the Medina explosion several times today from spectators. Basically when I just explained a few of the many things that went wrong on the day of the Case traction engine explosion and the differences with Nyitra's rig they seemed fine - got smiles and lots of sort of blank stares and several "What is that?".
One man asked me if I was a boilermaker because he was of the understanding that you need to be a boilermaker to run a boiler.
Very positive crowd from our perspective - and we had people bring out lawn chairs around the lake and watch us.
I think mainly most of the public has no clue, and it helps to be able to (hopefully) give them a more positive view of steam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doiI2t47ONo
-AKJ
