OK, OK! The primary structural members were salvaged from pallets, which in that time and place were mostly sour oak and old railroad ties. A lot of the "waterproofing" was plastic sheeting, as he did not believe in caulking, for the hull anyway. Much of the internal flotation was styrofoam and plastic bottles. The maindeck was more pallet oak which was largely in place to keep the bottles and styrofoam in as well as providing a walking surface.

Son of Town Hall was primarily a raft and the fact that it was able to make it to Europe was as largely a matter of the fact that whatever Divine Being there is looks after fools and sailors.

On launching day, when I arrived, she was set up parallel to the seawall. We attempted to "walk" it to a point of instability so that it would roll off the edge and right itself as it landed in the water. Unfortunately, it did not want to move in that mode. We ended up pivoting it 90 degrees so that we were able to get a little more than half the hull over the water. [We did not have to worry about bottom paint, as there was none.] Finally, it went over into the water, briefly acting like a submarine until it resurfaced and was taken under tow to its mooring.

It's sorta amazing what you can do with levers enough muscles and a bit of ingenuity.

Yes, it had masts and sails, sorta. There were enough sympathetic characters around that they were given discarded sails to recut. They were of really tired material. I don't recall what the spars were made of.