Had a near miss.
my driveway is very steep, hooks up the boat to go fishing, slowly down driveway, bump at bottom and clunk, stops to look.
i forgot to latch the towhitch on. boat had jumped off the towball and got stuck on the drawbar, very lucky, new car and all.
verycarefully blocked wheels on boat, rolled car forward till trailer dropped back on the ball
could have been very expensive.boat could have run over the car.
Cheers Cloud 9
then it realy gets ughly
That reminded me of the best one I saw. A Red Plymouth Firebird 455, Eagle on bonnet, Fake hair, gold chain, real estate agent driving, very expensive Platinum blonde in the passenger seat. With a 18 ft Haines sport on the trailer. A steep ramp in Jervis bay so he does the speed down the ramp slam the brakes on to launch the boat trick. Except he forgets to unhook the boat first
The whole rig slides into the water including the blonde, screaming all the way!!!! the car sinks and it is deep enough to drag the boat under too so it sinks........ on top of the car. They swim free and blonde storms off we were going for a dive anyway so ( when we stopped laughing) we geared up and hooked 2 x 4WD's on and towed the whole disaster out. It was the best wreck dive I have ever done
I sank the coast guard landcruiser in Yeppoon when the breaks failed but it was totally stuffed before going for a swim no great loss.
Hey Sportfish,
Yep, that was my Hydro.
Nothing bad on the trailer manufacturer though, because there was nothing wrong with it that caused the incident.
The boat was very high sided on trailer, and along with the canopies and clears, had a great deal of windage.
Poor old Commodore never seen the light of day again. Im sure it must have bent the chassis or something nasty, so it was gone very quickly!
Regards
Darren
Great story Dug - always better when it happens to someone else. 8)
not mine but one that my marine mach mate saw was
a bloke towed his 20foot mono back to port macquarie only to find when he gets out to unhich that the tow hitch was just sitting on the lip of the tow ball with the latch still open
so that was a 100km odd drive along a highway around cornors and slowing and speeding upnow thats what you call luck!
now for me
was towing my mates 4.1 poly home from fishing with a slight drizze (first for about 4 mounths) so needless to say the roads were VERY slippery
went up this hill near my home that is made from gravle tar and is very smooth and slippery in the wet anyway we started to lose traction goin up the hill so we both decided to go down the other side very slowly as it has a esse bend in it any way we were doing about 40km and started to brake to get around the esses well ute wanted to slow down but the boat had other ideas and we soon saw the boat trying it's best to pass the ute
well boat hit the tray on the back and finally stoped and a quick get out and look found nothing wrong at all except a small scratch on the polly
morale is if your going to do anything do it slowly so nothing gets hurt
but your got to love poly boats
There are some good stories there. I've got a couple of minor incidents, where I was pretty lucky.
Its amazing how quickly a boat can get a sway up and how scary it is. Not thinking at all, I swerved to miss a frilly lizard on the Arnhem Highway to Kakadu, doing about 110kph. The boat got a massive sway up and I felt the car (commodore!) getting its back end pulled side to side as well. Fortunately I somehow managed to control it. But had the heart in the mouth for a few moments. I dont swerve anything anymore.
Travelling to Maroon Dam one morning before dawn, after heavy overnight storms I hit water on the road at 100kph. Didn't see the water at all, and it lasted about 40 metres. Somehow I managed to aquaplane in a fairly straight direction - I slowed down a fair bit after that.
Final one was a broken draw bar. cracked at the winch post mount. First I knew about it was when I heard a terrible noise and looked in the rear vision mirrow to see sparks going everywhere. The draw bar was dragging on the bitumen, but very fortunately didn't break. I managed to do a Mcguiver to limp to the next town to get welded up.
matt
Here's one that still makes my hair stand on end.
Was about to reverse boat into backyard and asked wife to keep the kids out of the way. "Yep, no worries." she said. Mucked about for a minute, then hopped in and started backing. 3yo daughter, who I could see standing off to the side, suddenly starts screaming and waving and pointing at drawbar. Hit brakes, jumped took a look. There is 2yo son hanging under the drawbar by his arms & legs, enjoying the ride. Ensuing conversation between wife and me is not reprintable here
GOTTA watch those young'uns when reversing
Cheers,
Yockman
My old man was towing his trailer full of new furniture he'd just purchased along the windy hills of Mt Cotton.
As they rounded the next bend his mate asked him if that was Dadstrailer that was over taking them. Of course it was
My dear old old old old dad drove a couple k from the Labrador ramp back towards Surfers with the anchor bouncing along 30yards back. How that didn't wipe something out still amazes me.
OK I've got two, both from towing my 15' tinny.
First was when the Hilux was only about a year old. Didn't drop the tow hitch onto the bar properly so it unhitched when I drove out the driveway and smacked into the tailgate. Was still connected by the safety chain, but some damage to the tailgate. I've seen a few other utes with the same marks on the tailgate, so I know I'm not the only one.
Second was just around the corner heading off for a fish trying to drive too fast. Had to hit the brakes and ran up the back of an old corrolla. Fortunately hit it very soft and no damage was done.
Very easy to become complacent about towing!
Jeremy
"The underlying spirit of angling is that the skill of the angler is pitted against the instinct and strength of the fish and the latter is entitled to an even chance for it's life."
(Quotation from the rules of the Tuna Club Avalon, Santa Catalina, U.S.A.)
Apathy is the enemy
I'd have to agree with you there Jeremy, the complacency, on the way to Manley yesterday was at a set of lights waiting to turn right. Lights turn green and I went around to quickly, trailer rocked and rolled a bit but thought nothing of it and kept driving untill a truckie pulled along side me and was shouting to check the boat. I pulled over and had a look to see the boat had shifted to the left to a point where the keel was of all rollers and just sitting on the right hand skid. [smiley=hammer.gif].
I had to re - tighten the strap and limped to my mates place where to two of us bounced it back into place, could have been a lot worse.
Note to self 'TAKE IT EASY'.
Damien.
30 years ago heading down Tempe Hill in Sydney 5.30 Friday arvo peak hour traffic half way down axle of my Worsley 24/80 overtakes us car and boat sideways all the way down couldn’t believe I missed every car (18 years young and silly no licence no insurance) the things you do
In the dawn hours one Saturday morning, 2 mates and myself(driving) were travelling on the twisty roads through the cane fields near Beenliegh on the way to Rudy Maas with the boat in tow.
Hit one sweeping right hander corner with a bit too much speed on board(in a hurry as we got away later than I would have liked), had no option but to let it all drift off the road towards the cane field. Now there were road signs and power pole to the right and 8 foot tall cane to the left. Mate in the back seat wakes up to look out the rear passenger side to nothing but cane whizzing by his window...F#$&@k. Luckily we washed off enough speed & managed to steer it back onto the black stuff with nothing more than a huge heart starter & a wake up call to oneself. If your late, your late, don't try & make up time.
PS. was in HG Monaro, not Commodore.
A few years ago I was towing a 620 haines hunter warrior up to the sunshine coast in my holden one tonner. The boat and the back of the tonner was loaded up as I was going camping for several weeks.
Just past the 110 km sign on the highway, sitting on about that, and felt a bump, looked behind and noticed the boat and trailer airborne for a second, the car started dancing, and I very very slowly tryed to slow the car down and keep it on the black stuff. I had lost the rear wheel.
Funnily enough I past a towey on the side of the road helping someone else when I am trying to manage slowing down several tonne of very expensive fibreglass, a smick ute and not shit myself at the same time.
It took a while to find the wheel, as it traveled from the right rear and ended up down on the left hand side.
Thank the boat god there was no one else near me. The axlle mark scoured in the road was there for a long time to come reminding how bloody lucky I was
Another VS Commodore story.
Mine has heavy duty suspension and the 1.6 tonne tow kit.
Tandem axle box trailer with dodgey brakes with all of our fishing clubs gear for running a fishing comp at Boondooma Dam. First hill I went down with a couple of little whoops on it put me into fishys and yes I did do the wrong thing and applied a bit of brake which worsended the situation. I eased off to ride them out but then got to the point of no return and did the wrong thing again which is the natural instict and ended up doing whoops from about 90 degrees across the road to 90 degrees the other way before sliding down a bank sideways. Commodore got out of it not too bad with bent rims from sliding dead sideways on the bitumen and a totally twisted boot pan and rear end. Trailer and gear onboard were another story and everyone showed their true club spirit to get through that weekend.
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