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Bertram31.com General Bulletin Board
Re: The Ubiquitous Docking Committee
Posted By: Robert Rae In Response To: Re: The Ubiquitous Docking Committee (Carl)
Date: Sunday, 19 June 2005, at 5:32 p.m.
Talking about ramp incidents I have a beauty. My sister Diana worked at a local marina here back in the early 80's and I used to visit her regularly. One evening as we're sipping on our beers next to the marina's ramp at high tide, this brand new top-of-the-line Suburban shows up with a brand new 20ft deep-vee Hourston Glasscraft on a brand new tandem axle trailer. "Hmmmm... looks like someone won the lottery" I said. "Or got a nice inheritance" my sister chortled.
The skipper's wife gets out and he proceeds to bark out orders to her, basically telling her to direct him down the ramp. She tries her best but of course being new to this has no idea what she should be telling him, hand signals being out of her league. He ends up going up and down the ramp several times, yelling out less than complimentary words to her as he does so. He finally manages to manuever the boat and trailer down the ramp, further and further it all goes. I whisper to my sister "did they undo the tie-downs?". She responded with an evil grin "nope". She'd obviously seen this kind of mishap before. I figure we should try at least once to help out with the cause and so I yell out to the driver if he'd like some assistance. He responded gruffly "no thanks, done this LOTS of times". "OK", "arrogrant prick" I whisper again. We leaned back in our chairs, preparing for the folly that would no doubt ensue. But there was no way we could prepare ourselves for what lay ahead.
The wife gets in the boat so she can moor it after it's launching. The guy starts reversing again.. obviously in a rush.. perhaps to prove to us how efficient he was at this operation. The rear of the trailer begins to lift up.. and then the trailer wheels begin to leave the ramp.
The guy realizes somethings not quite right and leaves his cockpit to find out what's going on. He puts on the parking brake but does NOT put the truck in park. He walks down the ramp to view the situation. It all seemed rehearsed, because at this point matey wife has the boat engine running and has accidentally already put the boat in reverse.. slowly towing the Suburban down the ramp. He yells obsenities at her, she panics and instead of shifting into neutral only accelerates, he scrambles up to the Suburban again but it's too late.. the boat eventually drags his beloved prize SUV completely underwater, with the trailer floating under the boat and actually LIFTING the rear wheels of the SUV off the ramp as well.
By the time everything stops (I figure no more than 30 seconds in total), the bow of boat looks like it wants to dive under, and only the amber lights on the roof of the Suburban are visible.
By this time the man is in hysterics. We're speechless with disbelief. My sister yells for Garf the resident marine mechanic (now her husband) to hurry up and come out of his shop quick!! He does and is completely flabbergasted by what he sees. Cool as a cucumber he asks the owner (now visibly weeping) what happened and if the truck was still running when it submerged. "Yes" he replies "Oh well" says Garf. He tells Diana to call a tow truck. He proceeds back to his shop where he procures his dive gear.
The lottery winner guy is now the lottery whiner guy. Totally in shock and out of it. Garf manages to make sure the guy will pay for all the stuff required to get the rig out. The wife is still in the boat. I retrieve her with a dinghy.
The tow truck arrives and Garf helps hook it up with a tow rope. Garf gets on his gear and dives under to get into the Suburban, letting the brake off. Later he would tell me the stereo was still gurgling from the speaker.
The truck manages to drag everything back up onto the ramp. To look at it seemed eerily like nothing happened, except for all the salt water dripping from the Burb. The lottery winner walks up to the driver's door to greet Garf just as Garf fully suited opens the door.. releasing perhaps a hundred gallons of water all over the guy. What a fitting end. Diana and I at this point are in hysterics.
The rig (SUV, boat and trailer) remained at the scene for weeks. Insurance paid for everything.. including a replacement Suburban. Altogether Garf told me they estimated it at over $50,000 damage at the time.
Never saw the lottery winner guy again.
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