Don't buy a wooden boat
"Buy" isn't quite the word. It was free. Free boat! How could anyone resist? The fact it had been sunk at the bottom of the Basingstoke Canal for 10 years was a minor detail.

Strangely, not everyone quite had our eye for a bargain. My boss at the time, vastly more experienced in all things boaty than I was, said it'd be a bottomless pit of money, time, and effort. Pah, said I and the couple of mates who'd chipped in to pay for it to be towed halfway across Britain so we could fix it, industrial-size bilge pump running all the time. We knew it'd take six months of solid work and some cash.

But we were ready for it. This is a historic 70-year old boat we were saving. This is Important Work and our priceless heritage yadda yadda would be better for our effort.

It's now even more of a historic boat. It's now a historic 83-year old boat. Because that six-month schedule was set 13 years ago and the ----ing boat has only just, this week, gone back in the water with a fully mended hull. After a significant five-figure spend, and countless lost weekends spent arm-deep in horseshit. Yes, that's how you fix wooden boats. You mix horseshit with boiling hot tar to produce a noxious substance known as chalico. I am, sadly, not making that up.

Still, we now have a floating boat. All we need to do now is build a cabin and install an engine.

*weeps*
(ChaRleyTroniC is invincible with his chips and cheese, Thu 15 Nov 2012, 17:02, 10 replies)

Well at least
you know how that bunch with the Mary Rose feel.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 15 Nov 2012, 17:15, closed)

Surely
It would have been cheaper to buy a NEW boat. Or, failing that, just build one from the ground up.
( MatJ LOOK, Thu 15 Nov 2012, 17:55, closed)

Bloody-minded persistance
Deserves a click.
(SimianKid internet faffer, Thu 15 Nov 2012, 18:02, closed)

An early winner?
I liked as well
(justin(e), Fri 16 Nov 2012, 1:06, closed)

This is why we need nutters like you.
I'm involved with digging out some 200 year old tunnels that were built for no reason what-so-ever. We don't even know how much we still have to dig ffs!

Woo to nutty heritage!
( rjmrjm, Thu 15 Nov 2012, 18:44, closed)

Those the ones under Liverpool?
If not, where?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 15 Nov 2012, 21:41, closed)

Have a photo of it around, do you?

( Foxglove -- it all ends in tears anyway..., Thu 15 Nov 2012, 18:55, closed)

Here it is when we got it:


Note the large quantities of water inside and the tarpaulin etc. wrapped around the outside to stop it from sinking.

I'll try and dig out some photos of what it looks like now...
(ChaRleyTroniC is invincible with his chips and cheese, Thu 15 Nov 2012, 23:28, closed)

It's a real looker...
Seriously, why?

I admire your persistence though, good effect.
(SpangoTheWonderBadger is brewing beer, Fri 16 Nov 2012, 11:17, closed)

Good on you
I do old bikes, trams and strange old mining locomotives. Pain in the arse, but so satisying to bring them back to working order. Any pics?
( Greenbat, Thu 15 Nov 2012, 23:11, closed)