Sunday, April 9, 2017

The Perils of Launching/Recovering a Quart-Sized Boat With a Pint(o)-Sized Car


Let's face it: Launch ramps always have been and most likely always will be the setting for experiences that can leave us laughing, crying, cussing, or perhaps a combination of all. The following is just another such account that I recently found online.





"When I was a young man back in the '70s, I had an uncle who just had bought his first boat. I am sure every family has an uncle who is the black sheep of the family...you know, the kind who can't do anything right.

"I only was 12 or 13 years old at the time, so I didn't know anything about trailering a boat. I certainly didn't know there was anything wrong with pulling my uncle's heavy homemade boat with a Ford Pinto--one of those cars that was advertised to catch on fire when hit from behind.

"One day when we went fishing at a local river, it was high tide, which made it easy to launch the boat. Hours later, when we came back in, though, it was a different story, 'cause the tide was almost dead low. Now the ramp was a steep, wet and slippery mess.

"My uncle backed the trailer down the ramp, then tried to get the boat lined up on the trailer. The boat had to be centered exactly, or the off-balanced weight would cause the fender to rub against the tire. Regardless of what he did, the current kept moving the boat out of position, forcing him to try a number of things.

"He first backed the boat out and hit the trailer at a higher speed, in an effort to drive it further onto the trailer. The steepness of the ramp, however, doomed this option. He then backed the trailer farther into the water and tried again, still with no success. His next move was to tie a rope to the back corner of the boat, and have me go upstream and try to pull the boat into position, a move that finally gave us success.

"As we were pulling the boat up to the front post of the trailer, however, water started coming over the transom, near the motor. My uncle wasn't worried about this development, since the boat now was on the trailer. He just climbed into the Pinto, put it in gear, and hit the gas. All that happened, though, was that one of the rear wheels started spinning.

"He subsequently backed a little farther down the ramp, hoping he somehow would gain traction, but that didn't work. His next idea was to disconnect the trailer from the car and move the latter to dry ground, then tie the anchor line between the car and trailer and try to pull it up the ramp. Although he didn't tell me what he was planning, I soon figured it out when I saw him disconnecting the trailer. Realizing he hadn't thought that process through completely, I grabbed a big rock and put it under the one trailer wheel--just in time to keep the trailer from rolling down and off the end of the ramp.

"At last, my uncle got the anchor line hooked up and tried once more to pull the trailer and boat up the ramp. Again, however, the one little wheel just spun in place. Facing defeat, he finally walked over to the marina store at the ramp where we were and asked for help.

"A guy came out, hopped into his Ford 350 pickup, tied a rope to the front frame of the Pinto, and pulled both the Pinto and the boat to higher ground as easy as you please. While he was doing this, I noticed that the water weight in the boat's stern was causing the motor to drag along the ground, so I hopped onto the trailer tongue to offset the weight. There was just one problem: My weight caused the tongue to start dragging.

"In due time, everyone and everything was high and dry, and my uncle pulled the plug to allow the boat to drain. About a half hour passed before enough water had drained out for us to lift the tongue back onto the hitch ball and head home.

"As I look back on that incident, I cannot believe how many times my uncle and I pulled that boat with his Pinto over the years. Thankfully, there never was a repeat of that incident."

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