It was unfortunate that three years later I met a much older man (Jym) who appeared at the time to be very sophisticated BUT knew nothing whatever about boats. I decided he should be "improved".
We couldn't afford a proper boat. I was earning about (£8) $20 a week as a secretary. Jym had been a free-lance photographer in London, so worked the holiday-camps and dance halls, taking photographs.
We wandered around the harbours of Weymouth (Dorset, U.K.) and eventually found a delapidated Burnham Day Boat. This unlikely vehicle had been used as a fishing boat. The whole monster was covered with thick paint. I was warned by a friend that this was the usual ploy when the fabric of a boat (or anything else) was rotten. Also the front deck was built up with a box.
The vendor said this Burnham Day Boat had been used for sailing. That was before they put the box on the front and an outboard motor on the back. He had stashed the sails and masts away in his garage. The sails were orange canvas. They had an unpleasant smell, but had not started rotting yet. Most of the ropes were missing. There was no centre-plate. The rudder seemed to have been cannibalized from a different kind of boat.
Burnham U.K. is an area of shallow water. The Burnham is a shallow draught boat and SHOULD have had a folding rudder, so that it would slide up easily over mud. Instead it had a beautiful, solid wood, very deep draught rudder. This was to prove very important.
The huge sails were very powerful and exerted great leverage upon the centre-plate. Jym had a big metal centre-plate specially made. It was very heavy, so I (the crew) could not easily pull it up. In spite of its' weight and apparent solidity, the new centre-plate was made of a metal which did not have much torque strength. This also was to prove very important.
Eventually it was the only thing we could afford. I think we paid £50 (25 each). We dragged it five miles on a trolley, up to my mother's back lawn. It killed the lawn. We brushed pints of paint remover onto the planks. This revealed quite a pleasing colour wood, which we bleached and varnished. The paint remover splashed onto my legs and hands. I still have the scars!
We stripped away the box and covered the sailing deck with a canvas fabric, which we painted blue.
The flooring of the monster also had to be treated with a tar paint. The actual bottom of the old wooden boat (and all others of wooden build) had to be periodically re-caulked with a special cotton rope. This was plugged between the planks and then the boat had to be filled with water to swell and prove the sealing.
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