Story
S/S Pete is a steam loop built by Juhani Autio in 1990. Although that is Pete’s official year of construction, it is made of old components. Its hull was built in 1950 for the Kemijoki Swimming Association as a towing engine with sequence number 119. The vessel was built under the supervision of boatmaster Haapala, and was fitted with a Ford or Valmet Diesel aircraft, which had disappeared when Autio bought the vessel. The Swimming Association had vessels up to serial number 140, both steam and motor vessels. Uitto 119 served the company in the waters of Rovaniemi.
The Pete steam engine was manufactured in 1917 in Vaasa at the Onkilahti workshop. Its power is 5-7 IHV, and it has been in some steam loop in the waters of Mikkeli. It is a Tandem-Compound, a rare type of machine in which the cylinders (vertically superimposed) use a common connecting rod. At present, however, only a 9.6 cm diameter high-pressure cylinder is in use due to sealing problems between the seals between the cylinders. However, even with one cylinder, the distance is folded at a speed of 4-5 knots.
The boiler is the youngest of the ship’s main components. The 2.5 square meter boiler was made in Helsinki at Kafatek’s workshop in 1960 as an auxiliary boiler for construction sites. It has 16 tubes with a water volume of 140 liters. In official inspection books, it is marked as a steam generator, with a pressure class of 2bar. For the first couple of years, Autio sailed in Pete in the Bothnian Bay at the mouth of the Kiiminkijoki River, from where the ship was transferred to Keitele in 1992. Today, Pete is most often seen in Konginkangas, where it drives in Räihänselä and Koivuselä to Matilanvirta. It has also been seen in Suolahti, Viitasaari and Sumiais. Pete is based in Konginkangas.
