Boat ramp mishap...

GC

Well-known member
Being around boat ramps a guy gets to see all sorts of launching/loading gymnastics. I saw one yesterday I've not seen before. Guy and wife pull their boat to the ramp. He backs the trailer down and lines it up so that all the wife has to do is put the truck in reverse and back up, then forward straight out to the parking lot. Guy gets out removes the motor tote, stern straps, puts plug in... looking good. He then unhooks the bow strap and climbs in. Lady gets in the truck.

I'm sitting in my boat at the dock waiting for my son to bring our rig around. So I'm casually watching the launch. Then I notice... the boat is sliding off the trailer. This ramp is pretty steep, the guy in the boat is standing up getting something out of a storage compartment, wife in truck is oblivious. I yelled over, "Hey! You're sliding off the trailer!" Took two yells to get his attention. He looks up from what he's doing, looks at me annoyed just about the time the skeg of the trimmed up motor made contact with the concrete ramp. The impact knocked him off balance and while he was scrambling to regain his balance the boat slid completely off the trailer and crashed onto the concrete ramp - high and dry. Boat was a 17.5' Triton glass bass boat with 115 Merc.

I'll say this, his trailer has a heck of a winch. Hooked the boat back to the winch strap and with some help he got the boat loaded back on the trailer. Motor skeg was trashed, lots of gel coat damage on the stern bottom, pad and keel. Said he would file an insurance claim. Reminded me to be aware of the variables in ramps!!!
 
wow thats a new one to me.


best one i saw... waiting to get onto the ramp, evening so several boats coming out - there were a couple of us on the water in our boats and vehicles waiting to come down to the ramp.

wife on the dock holding the rope, hubby at the wheel... failing miserably over and over and over to get that trailer down the ramp, no less under the boat.

finally after about 10 or 12 tries, i see the wife loop the rope around the post, throw her hands up, stomp up around the front of the truck and waves him out of the cab. he slinks down to the dock, head hanging low. sure as [beeep] she puts the trailer under the boat on the first try. literally pulls the truck forward to straighten up, backs right down, and they're off the ramp in less than 2 mins.


poor SOB, you could tell he wanted to go crawl in a hole somewhere, burn his man card and cry.

i was one of several folks who witnessed it, thankfully for him it was before the days of camera phones.
 
LOL, yeah that would sting! Twice I've seen guys forget to pull the bow mounted trolling motor up and then power load the boat on the trailer. Tears hades out of the trolling motor!
 
Boy, that sure would ruin your day to slide off the trailer onto the dry ramp and tear up the boat.

That’s a pretty funny story Plant.One

Just a few weeks ago, my father in law and I went to the lake after I got off work to meet up with family to fish that night. My sister in law and her husband had went ahead earlier that day to take my kids and theirs out on the bass boat and to fish and play during the day. When they were offloading the boat into the water, my sister in law got the 30 second crash course on how to run the trolling motor. Off she went into the water on the boat with the kids while her husband was parking the truck. When he returned to the ramp, he found her and the kids just drifting around on the boat because she couldn’t figure out that the arrow on the trolling motor showed which direction it would go. He had to catch a ride with another boater and hop from that boat to his to get them going.
 
Good ones! Some dip$hit here in Miami Beach tried to steal a 60ft sport fisher two years ago from our local marina. Only got one screw going. Needless to say he couldn't make it out and turned it over after pinballing off the sea walls. 3 million dollar boat.
 
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I feel for the ol boy and the boat trailer backing. I pull the boat and the wife pull the fifth wheel camper. She can park that sucker before I can get the boat off the trailer and back to the camp spot. I can back boats,horse trailers of all sizes, low boys,etc, but that camper takes me an hour to get it where I want it.

No way i heck would my boat wnent back on that trailer
I would have had to push on on down to the water.
 
Working on a fisheries creel survey, 3 retirement age men with a Lund aluminum boat. Water level is below normal and they are towing with an old station wagon. Backed to the edge of the ramp,boat on sand at water's edge, hook electric winch to the bow eye. I'm about 100' away,watching the boat being winched up onto the roller trailer. 1 guy on each side and one running the winch, I can see the boat get pulled up tight to the winch post. Guy running the winch hasn't moved away and I can see the winch post start to flex, I yelled and started running their way. No one hears me and I watch the boat shoot off the trailer back into shallow water, motor up. The winch pulled the bow eye off and the the post sprung back, lucky no one was behind the boat. I helped them get it back on the trailer, then had to pull their car/trailer up the ramp with the state truck, trying not to laugh the whole time.
 
I could tell you a story about a fella that drank to much and forgot to put his plug in and sank his 21ft big block Chevy day cruiser boat on the beach at a river side casino in Arizona many moons ago. But I wouldn't want to incriminate myself.
 
This is true because you can't make up something this stupid. Guy took his boat out for the first time everything went well 'till it was time to put it on the trailer. Backs the trailer in the water gets in the boat and hits the trailer at about 45mph. Well the boat went over the trailer and almost ended up in the truck cab. Salesman at the boat dealer said the guy came in raising h3ll wanting the dealer to pay for all the damage. Guys reasoning for wanted the dealer to pay..... They told him it was a drive on trailer. Yep there is some stupid people out there.
 
I witnessed almost the same thing as PC. Guys unhooked all the straps and unlatched the tilt trailer and all was well on the flat above the ramp. When the trailer started going down the incline of the ramp the trailer tilted and launched the boat right in the middle of the concrete ramp. He got it back on the trailer in the same fashion described, not a pretty sound to hear as the fiberglass was scraping along the concrete while trying to get the boat back on the trailer. That was an inboard, I don't know if he did any damage to the motor.
 
I always put in at a marina that had two ramps. The north ramp was really steep, so I always used the south ramp. Came in one day after a morning of fishing in the (salt water) bay to see a Suburban backed in up to the windshield in the water in the north ramp. I assume there was a boat trailer behind it as there was a boat tied up to the dock. I suppose the owners were inside the marina awaiting a tow truck.

Regards,
hm
 
Okay, I couldn't resist, so here goes. Was waiting my turn at the ramp to load my boat. A beautiful 19 foot Sanger Blown Jet Pickle Fork boat was being backed down the ramp by a beautiful young lady. I head up the ramp to my truck as she gets it off the trailer and it's floating by the dock. I am almost to my truck and hear a woman screaming, I ran back down there, can I help you? Yes, the boats sinking.

It's going down fast, a giant 454 with two Holley 750 double pumpers on top. Water is almost to the valve covers. I jumped in, told her I would have to start the motor and take off or the boat was going down in about 30 foot of water. The other lady was parking the trailer and ran down when she heard all the screaming too. It's her boyfriends boat, they took it without asking. She says, [beeep] yes, do whatever you can to save the boat.

I fired it up as the water was almost to the two carburetors. Bam, got it fired after a few tries, rip it into reverse, then hard into drive, and pinned it for open water, knowing full well they didn't put in the plug. I'm almost at full throttle but can't make any speed since I have a boat full of water, and the faster I drive, the more the water runs to the back and over the motor. I still don't know how or why it fired and ran. I ran about 2 miles down and 2 miles back, gaining speed as the water ran out the drain hole. Couple more laps and I can't see that I am making any more progress, so I fly into the boat launch area again (No wake zone), just bouncing the other boats off the docks, yelling at them to get the trailer back on the dock and do it NOW. Back out to sea I go, run up and down again, then back into the launch area when I see that they have the trailer there. I just drove it right onto the trailer. They left, never saw them or the pickle fork again, was a really nice boat, glad I could save it for the boyfriend at least. I thought that it wouldn't start with the water over the plug wires, but it did for some reason and I am glad it did.
 
I have a good one that I still laugh at to this day. We were up camping at the local lake. We were camping where we could see the lake and boat ramp. We had just got off the water when this big Class A motorhome came pulling in with a monster pontoon with a triple axel trailer pulls up to the prep area. The wife gets out and starts guiding the husband down the boat ramp. As they get close to the water she moves from the front of the camper to the side of the boat as he is still backing down. He starts to jack knife the boat and trailer and proceeds to run the back set of duals over the curb down at the bottom of the ramp and drops them into the sand. His wife yells at him to say that he is hitting the dock with the motor. So he slams the motor home into drive and floors it. The tires spin on the sand and hi-centers the rig on the curb. The back end of the boat is jack knifed against the dock so they can't unload the boat cause it isn't deep enough to float it. And the camper is high centered and can't go forward or back. He gets out and they have a screaming match for about 15min. They tried to get a couple of people to try and pull them out. All of them said they didn't have a big enough truck. They finally had to call in a big semi tow truck to pull their stuff out. It to the better part of an hour for the tow truck to get there. No one could use that side of the ramp and they had half the dock space in use. Both of them were down at the dock trying everything they could to keep the dock away from the back of the boat. When the tow truck showed up the 1st thing he asked was cash or charge. $500.00 later he hooks on and drags the whole unit up to solid ground. And both the tow truck and the Class A motor home with the boat leave. Never to be seen again all weekend. Mind you this a Thursday afternoon. There are some other ones but not near as funny. We always like being close to the boat ramp when we camp.
 
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