TwoBallScrewBall
Lieutenant Commander
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2003
- Messages
- 1,695
Went down to the public ramp yesterday with my brother in law to try to get us some stripers. Pull up with the boat and stop out of the way to unstrap, pull the fenders over, tie on the bow rope, etc, and there are 2 trucks at the ramp. First guy pulls out. Then second guy starts to pull out and some folks watching (you know those guys) start yelling. I look over. The guy has maybe a 15 or 16 footer with an outboard on the trailer, winched up 3/4 of the way, and while trying to pull out the trailer popped the ball. Tongue is up in the air, transom on the ground hanging off trailer, only thing keeping boat there was safety chains which were straight up and down at this point. So we go over to help him since nobody else was doing anything except watching. The hitch latch was up (unhitched). Tried to stand on the tongue to get it hooked but even my close to 300 pounds wouldn't do it. Tried to winch boat up to bow roller to balance out trailer but it wouldn't budge. Guy said it was a 'free' boat he got, he thinks it's now full of water under the floor which is why he couldn't winch it up in the first place. So my brother in law also stands on the tongue and it starts to come down but it's going to hit the tailgate on his nice diesel f250. So I decide to stand on the tongue to keep the boat off the ground while he backs into the water to get the boat floating and the trailer hooked. Does not work. So I have him pull back up, and have the brother in law get my giant wheel chocks. All the while I'm still on the tip of the tongue keeping his transom off the ground. Pulled the boat up the ramp, placed chocks behind trailer wheels, then while both me and the b.i.l. stood on the tongue I had him back SLOWLY up to the point we could latch the trailer on. Gentleman was very grateful. Kept repeating over and over how he got the boat for free and that's what he gets. I told him to just relax. Ended up pulling the plug once he was off the ramp and once the 10000 gallons of water came out he was able to winch up the rest of the way and take off. <br /><br />All that and I still didn't catch any stripers last night. 2 crabs. So much for Karma. 
