I don't want to "leak water" on live steam, but this is one of the reasons I opted not to get involved (with Steam) until after I retire. I already have a boat that also requires at least 2 hours of maintenance, flushing, draining, packing, unpacking, etc, for each hour of use that goes on the meter.OMG "exercise in continuous maintenance" so true. I was told that for every hour run time = 2 hours maintenance and another guy said not true. Well I have been at this cense Aug 17, 2019 and still don't have one hour of run time.
Hopefully you can get it fixed by rolling your tube ends. I've seen people use threaded rods or cables with threaded ends swaged on (if you can't get a straight shot a the tube(s), snaked through from the smoke box side, then lathe up a little tapered sleeve, thread it on there, and tighten up the other end.