According to Schwartz, he and his filming crew managed to find an appropriate ship on November 18, 1963, only one day before filming was scheduled to begin. There was an element of urgency, as the ship was located by the show’s scouts floating in Honolulu Harbor, which is one island away on Oahu. The ship was old and no longer had a working engine, so the crew had to tow their desiccated Minnow to Kauai where it could be smashed up.
Then, Schwartz recalled, the smashing commenced. “In order to make the boat really wrecked-looking,” Schwartz wrote, “we pulled it up on the beach and workmen with huge sledgehammers began to smash gaping holes in the sides. I was watching this procedure, to make sure the holes were big enough and in the appropriate places in the boat.” The holes are very familiar to fans of “Gilligan’s Island” who saw the hammered handiwork in every opening theme sequence.
It was then that Schwartz realized they had an incredulous onlooker. He recalled:
“An old Japanese gentleman happened to be walking along the beach at that time. He had no idea who we were or what we were doing. He stood quietly and observed what was going on. He watched carefully for quite a while as the workmen pounded huge holes in the sides of the boat. Finally, the Japanese gentleman turned to me and said very seriously, ‘They keep doing that, boat no float.'”
I mean, he’s not wrong.
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