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Hopefully everyone’s
timing is on the mark, because if the walk-in freezer-size boiler reaches
the maximum 250 pounds of pressure before you need it, you’ll
have to dump some of the coal fire through the grates (and clean it
out later) or noisily and inelegantly blast steam out the stack (heavens,
no!). Similarly, once underway, you best be darn careful about what’s
in front of you. Cobb estimates a full 20 seconds to get the five-foot-diameter
prop to shift from 175 rpm full ahead to full astern, much longer for
Cangarda to actually stop.
Not that Cobb is in
any way distrustful of the big 300-hp Sullivan Triple Expansion Yacht
Engine and the various matching Davidson auxiliaries that push air and
water through the system and handle the anchors. Actually, it sounds
as if he’d just as soon spend his watches minding them as on the
bridge. He points out that there is no internal combustion going on
in Cangarda’s engine room. In fact, there’s not much
internal anything, as pushrods, camshafts, oiling systems, etc., are
all out in the open. “At full speed ahead, you should be able
to hold a normal conversation down there,” he says. “It’s like being inside a giant sewing machine…what you hear and see
is the wonderfully complex linear and rotational motions of all those
parts.” Apparently you feel them, too, as the various hefty shafts,
pistons, and so forth generate gentle but discordant centrifugal forces.
Under Cobb’s
tutelage, I also learn what “triple expansion” is all about.
The steam runs through three cylinders, one after another, each larger
than the previous in order to salvage power from the diminishing energy.
Cangarda’s high-pressure piston is nine inches in diameter,
her low pressure one is a whopping two feet. While the design was meant
to increase fuel efficiency, the yacht’s range with her 15-ton
coal bunkers full is estimated to be about 300 miles! There’s
some stoking going on down there, though Cobb claims it’s much
more artful work than portrayed in movies like Titanic. Combined
with tending to all those moving parts, “You don’t just
push a button and drive away,” he explains. “Steam is organic;
you become a major part of the engine.”
Not that Cobb wouldn’t
also be quite content on deck, perhaps checking that the steward has
properly laid out the yacht’s wardrobe of dinnerware and crystal
for 20 in the Cuban mahogany forward house. Or perhaps he’d be
aft in the drawing room, entertaining guests with tales from Cangarda’s
past, of which there are many. For starters, her name is derived from
those of original owner Charles Canfield, the Michigan lumber mogul,
and his wife Belle Gardner, of the New York Gardners. It was not an
auspicious beginning, as on the very first cruise, Mr. Canfield engaged
in some “indiscretion” with a young female guest, causing
“shocked indignation” amongst others onboard and eventually
America’s most expensive divorce (to date). Bottom line: Canfield
only got in that one cruise before selling his lovely yacht to the colorful
Canadian Senator George T. Fulford.
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Cangarda, Part 3 > Page 1,
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