6
I traveled down to the hills of Northern Arkansas to look at a the sails that the fellow posted up that would ostensibly fit my Parker Dawson 26. Odd to find random Parker Dawson parts ANYWHERE much less in Northern Arkansas so it was certainly worth the look.
Turns out that neither sail was a particularly good fit for my later Dawson. The guy really wanted to be rid of the entire boat and was keen to make a deal on the whole thing but the reality was that there wasn't that much there that was directly helpful to me.
My buddy Stagg happened to be along and as we looked at the entire hull, Stagg slowly got to thinking that in all reality, the entire boat might be worth bringing back from the dead rather than chain sawing the whole thing up.
The boat was clearly much loved quite some time ago but the previous "real" owner died in 2004 and the boat had been sitting on it's trailer in a forest since then and we all know what that means...
We did not snap interior pics, but trust me, it was plenty wet and the entire thing was generally quite icky. None the less, Stagg was notionally interested and the seller eventually dropped the price to a can't miss price point and we eventually changed out as many of the old tires with spares from my trailer and hit the road.
The trip back was mostly uneventful other than one wheel bearing heating up and dragging a middle wheel down till it heated up and blew one of the middle tires. No big deal, we just strapped up the middle axle and finished the trip as a mere tandem axle trailer rather than a triple.