Research at the boat launch 4/26/09

[mike64]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Last summer I was concerned about looking stupid around the experienced boaters when launching/trailering. After seeing how many yahoos there were doing rude, dumb and dangerous things, I quickly lost any self-consciousness and only concerned myself with defensive boating. I think years of experience won't matter much without a little common sense.

Hey Shizzy, out of curiosity I copied & pasted your coordinates into Google Maps. I see you're smack-dab in the middle of Gervais Lake in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Sweet! You live in a houseboat?

 

[idrownworms]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

You guys would have loved watching me at the ramp last summer. After a stroke not only do you have to relearn things and your balance in less than bad. Yes I fell into the lake several times when its warm its ok but when its a little cold it doesn't do anything for your day. It took me half the summer to relearn how to get the boat loaded on the trailer straight. The only bright side of all of that is that I can park in the handicap space

 

[bowman316]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Man!

I also saw a guy powerload his jet ski into the back of his ford f150. That truck is going to be one rust bucket.

Oh yeah, from my experience 2 above, he also wasn't sure how to reverse his winch, I showed him the trick to that too. I referred him here, I told him to search for everything he didn't know about and he'd find it.
This place rocks!

now that guy thinks outside the box, i would never think about putting a ski in the back of a truck. but i may do it if i had no trailer and the ski was old, as well as the truck.
back down till the tail gate touches water. then winch it up

 

[skargo]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

now that guy thinks outside the box, i would never think about putting a ski in the back of a truck. but i may do it if i had no trailer and the ski was old, as well as the truck.
back down till the tail gate touches water. then winch it up

This guy rode it in all the way!!! His bed was 75% submerged.

 

[bowman316]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

lol, maybe not the best way to do it.
might be easier on a steep ramp, like at HDG, like the bush river ramp is hardly downhill.

 

[PmDavis300]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Last summer I was concerned about looking stupid around the experienced boaters when launching/trailering. After seeing how many yahoos there were doing rude, dumb and dangerous things, I quickly lost any self-consciousness and only concerned myself with defensive boating. I think years of experience won't matter much without a little common sense.

Hey Shizzy, out of curiosity I copied & pasted your coordinates into Google Maps. I see you're smack-dab in the middle of Gervais Lake in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Sweet! You live in a houseboat?

little small for houseboats. infact, more then 2 speedboats on that lake is to many for my liking. i always take my boat there in early spring.

 

[bowman316]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

i was comming in from fishing one afternoon, and a guy was launching his boat (about 21- 25 ft long). It was a really new I/O. So i get the the ramp, and my buddy sees out of the corner of his eye a boat falling off a trailer, about 10 ft from the water. We get up to the ramp, and this boat is sitting there on the concrete, with only the back 2 ft of the port side hull touching water.

And by now it is completely off the trailer. They must have unhooked the bow strap before backing down. So i position my boat in front of their's, (in the water) and attach a line from their stern eye to my stern eye and i start to pull them into the water, so they can get the boat back on the trailer. I start pullin, with a 70 hp enigne, and i get up to full throttle, and i am not moving, they start rocking the boat, and slowly it starts to get more wet. Eventually we get it floating, and they pull it on the trailer to inspect it.

ruined his day.

 

[skargo]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

lol, maybe not the best way to do it.
might be easier on a steep ramp, like at HDG, like the bush river ramp is hardly downhill.

This was at Mariner's point in Joppatowne if you are familiar?

 

[bowman316]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Sorry statement on the current US culture when NONE of the 4 people had the cojones to tell the guy he was cutting the line. He probably wasn't aware of what he did.



On top of not even politely asking him if he was aware that there was a line to launch, after he's gone one of them bravely gouges his truck!!! Nice bunch of boaters down there. If I was him, I would have a hard time NOT returning the favor to everyone else parked there when I got back to the ramp and saw the scratch, especially since he probably has no idea what he did ....

I've found that everyone I've pointed out the waiting line and prep lanes to has just been newer boaters or boaters unfamiliar with the ramp who were happy to go along once they understood the system.

no need to take it out on the truck. I would not want someone damaging my truck if they had some sort of problem with me, if you scratch someone's truck, they will be more likley to scratch yours.

what did the truck ever do?

 

[bowman316]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

This was at Mariner's point in Joppatowne if you are familiar?

yes, that actually was the same ramp that this guy dumped his boat on the ramp.

that is one of the nicer ramps around, that and the park in hDG are the nicest. but i think mariner point is free.

 

[Nandy]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

So i position my boat in front of their's, (in the water) and attach a line from their stern eye to my stern eye and i start to pull them into the water, so they can get the boat back on the trailer. I start pullin, with a 70 hp enigne, and i get up to full throttle, and i am not moving, they start rocking the boat, and slowly it starts to get more wet. Eventually we get it floating, and they pull it on the trailer to inspect it.

ruined his day.

I admire your desire to help. That is a trade less and less common in our society. However that sounded somehow risky. Rope could had snap and damage either boat or a person. Not to mention that was probably a lot of force applied to that stern eye. I'm glad everything turned out good.

 

[bowman316]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

yea, i thought they were gona just winch it back on the trailer, but that prob would have caused more damage, making the hull drag more on the concrete, as the bow angles up to go on the trailer.

 

[David Greer]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Are you saying it was the 25' that fell off the trailer? that's a lot to drag across concrete even downhill. Hate to see his gel coat after that!
There are a number of techniques to get a trailer under a boat, but none are "easy" and few would work at a crowded ramp.
I've moved a number of boats around on rollers--4" diameter wood poles (round fence posts) 4-6' long. You can build pyramids with those things. It's all I use for a 14' Lowe with a 15; I can launch alone and could retrieve as well if I had too (not at a public dock though!)
Another salvage technique over soft ground (sandbar, marsh) is to jack the boat up then push it forward to flop down on the ground. Baby steps, but I saw it done to take a drunk's 25' across 100 yards of marsh.

 

[bowman316]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

this boat may have been closer to 21 ft. my boat is 16 ft long.
my motor kicked waves up the ramp, and i think that helped get the boat floating.

 

[salty87]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

the only thing i've run across at the ramp this year was an old timer's spare tire. he was taking his sweet time. i think he was around before the lake, he was so old.

i waited my turn, he didn't 'need' any help...so he says. once he was done he pulled his truck up the ramp and i back down...only 1 lane at this ramp.

about halfway down my truck comes to a stop. i'm thinking great, wtf is this. and here i am making chuckling at the old guy.

i get out and find his spare tire wedged behind 1 of my trailer tires. it fell off his truck on his way up. he asked me to roll it to the side and he'd pick it up when he backed his truck back down. it was gone when i pulled out later.

 

[Mike250]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

A couple times the wife and I took a cooler and a couple chairs to a launch ramp on Table Rock lake over the holiday weekend to watch the action. You'd be amazed!

I saw one guy getting pulled out by his buddy, talking on his cell phone at the helm, as he was getting pulled up. The boat was coming-up with the center line resting on the trailer fender and was just about ready to fall-off the trailer. I yelled at the driver to "stop" and went over to the cell phone captain pointing out that the reason his boat was at a 45 deg angle was that it's ready to fall off onto the ramp.

Without putting down his phone he motioned for the driver to back-up so "I" could line him-up better on the trailer. Got it lined-up and off they went.

The dude never hung-up and had no idea of how close he came to being the biggest moron on the lake that day.

In a matter of two hours I helped about 2-3 people who forgot the drive down too.

Ran outa beer too.

 

[OldePharte]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

I really felt sorry for two guys last night. I wish that they had done this when I could have gotten a couple of shots.

I watched a old pontoon come in towards the ramp. This thing had the side paneling removed and replaced with chain link. Apparently, they had been busy trimming some trees as the deck was completely covered in oak branches to about 5 feet high. On top of the branches were two ladders, a couple of 55-gallon plastic trash containers, wheelbarrows, and assorted hand tools. One guy get off at the dock to retrieve the truck. It was a dump truck pulling a boat trailer. Okay, this I had never seen before.

They back the trailer down the ramp, the pontoon is gunned and up it goes on the trailer. Perhaps these guys were fishermen, as the pontoon driver, yells Okay. The truck driver takes off, and the pontoon promptly falls of the back of the trailer. Not completely mind you, just the rear third. So after the aluminum hull/concrete grinding sound gets the truck drivers attention, he stops. Naturally, both men get out of their respective vehicles and look at what happened. Okay, so now what.

They really had only one real choice, back everything back down the ramp about 30 feet to get the pontoon floating again. More grinding sounds. The engine started right back up, but there was no helm control. Seems as though the steering cables broke. Through the binoculars, it appeared that the engine still had the steering handle (?). So eventually, the boat driver has one foot on the engine tiller to steer and is leaning forward, as the shift lever and throttle were on the helm station. So here he is left hand on the non-functioning steering wheel, right hand controlling the throttle and gear, and right foot steering the whole thing. After about a half an hour he manages to get the boat back on the trailer. This time they get it further forward and tie it on. After they get it out, I see that the trailer is 4 feet longer than the pontoon logs.

Poor guys, trying to make a buck, working with make-do equipment, and it takes them an hour to get off the lake and head home.

 

[TJDave]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Boat launches are always a great source of entertainment. Every year, we see at least one bonehead unsecure his boat on a roller type trailer before he heads down the steep ramp where we live. When the trailer veers off track and he hits the brakes, well, you know the rest of the story!

 

[strokeoluck]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Well we're relatively new boaters so I'm not going to tell you everything we've done in the last month or you'd all get a good chuckle out of it I'm sure. But I do have a couple questions for the group.

Tonight we launched at Lake Waconia in the southwest suburbs of the Twin Cities. For those of you familiar w/this lake we launched on the east side of the lake at the public access launch. That launch area has two ramps, a northern (shallow ramp, we learned a little too late) ramp and a southern (deeper) ramp. After dipping our boat in the water in the shallow ramp and realizing that wasn't going to work, we pulled it over to the southern ramp. But here's where I got a little confused; there were two docks and therefore four areas from which to launch/retrieve boats. After reading some of your posts here I'm now wondering, is there an appropriate protocol to follow when it comes to launching from certain ramps, and retrieving from certain ramps? I don't recall seeing any signs indicating this. Thanks.

 

[bowman316]

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

Re: Reasearch at the boat launch 4/26/09

most ramps you can launch and retreive from both. Some will have certain ramps designated as retrieve ramps, and others as launch ramps, but most people don't follow the signs anyway. And open ramp is fair game for either. One thing that is easy to do is launch when someone is wating to retieve their boat. Make sure there is not a boat sitting in the water waiting for the trailer to back in, before you launch.