Boat Ramp horror stories

[Tequilasun]

NEVER underestimate a room full of stupid people!!

Ok, not a boat ramp story, but I still laugh at this one.

Picture 4 fraternity dudes on a dock, 3 of which have been taking rides on a 2 seated jet ski. 4th dude has been watching us for an hour or so. He says he wants to ride it, but wants a lesson first(seriously LOL). So the owner of the ski offers to piggy back him for a turn. He jumps on the ski and pulls it up parallel to the dock for the newbie to hop on.

The newbie proceeds to put one foot on the ski on the near side...then in a stroke of genius, drops his whole body weight down on the one side. Flipping the ski. The owner is chucked off and is visibly pissed at the whole thing. They get the ski righted, to me and another guy laughing our butts off. Making the owner even madder!

They try the whole thing again. This time the newbie, does a flying strattle leap onto the ski, flipping it the other way and chucking the driver in the processes. I about peed myself watching the grace of this action.

So this keeps going and on the forth try, our hero driver pulls a rodeo move and gets the thing settled with both him and the clutz on the thing. They take off down the cove. Btw, this jet ski is used for some racing and is hella fast. They zip up and down the cove a couple times.

Then they go way up the cove, and come screaming past us. The whole time you can hear the driver just absolutly belly laughing at what he's planning to do, and the clutz is white knuckled hanging on for dear life.

I know what's up, and I can barely watch through tears in my eyes from laughing.

They get about 200 yards from us, and probably 60 mph at least. The driver turns her dead left, and the clutz skims across the water like a flat stone. He has it all good until his clutz brain tells him he needs to slow down and he opens his body up, whereby he goes from mach "oh, sh1t" to stop in a tenth of a second. Huge splash, and I haven caught my breath. I'm turning blue at it all.

Then the driver made him to the swim of shame back to the dock.


God, jet skis can be fun!

[Booms]

I have so many good boat landing stories. Which one to choose. We have a cottage on a lake in Tomahawk, WI. If any of you have seen the movie Great Outdoors you understand what north central Wisconsinites have to put up with while our neighbors to the south (Chicago, IL) come up every weekend and provide us with great laughs.
My wife, brother-in-law and I were waiting for a boat to launch. The boat landing was two wide but they proceeded to take up both spots. It was an somewhat new fishing boat and one guy was in the boat and the other was backing the boat down the landing. The boat was in the water and he started the engine, put it in reverse and the boat did not come off the trailer. So he waived the driver of the truck to come down more. Once he did that the boat still did not come off the trailer. They continued to back the truck into the water until the front door was wet. Now by this time there are 15 people standing around waiting for these two numb nuts to figure out that the rear straps were still holding the boat to the trailer. But because my bro-in-law and I were having so much fun we stopped everyone from telling these guys about the straps and were now taking bets on how long this would go on until they figured out that the straps were still connected. During this time the driver of the truck was yelling expletives to the boat driver and the boat driver was kindly throwing F-bombs back to the driver of the truck. The driver of the truck kindly asked if he removed the rear straps and the guy in the boat yelled, "You think I am a F'ing idiot! Of course I did." More bickering between the two until finally the boat driver walked to the back of the boat, looked around, pulled out is fishing knife and cut the straps off of the boat and trailer. Once this was done there were cheers from everyone waiting on the landing, which were meet with a middle finger from the boat driver.
Now I do not want to generalize all IL people but this is a sample of the classy people we get to share our lakes with in WI.

[raythompson]

Clever Dude

I was at Canyon Lake located in Texas in the early 80's with my prior boat. I had gotten my boat out when a fellow comes in from the lake with an air boat like they use in the swamps with the big engines and airplane propellers. He docks the boat quite skillfully and gets his truck and backs the trailer down in one shot. Obviously he has done this before and is quite competent. His wife (or significant other) is still on his boat.

He starts his boat up and lines up with the trailer and makes it in the first shot. Impressive. He gets out of the boat and gets into his truck and the wheels start spinning. No amount of effort will stop the spin. Must be something with his tires, perhaps too much water on the ramp, ramp too steep, or his pickup is just too light. He calmly gets out of his truck and motions for his wife to get in the truck. I suspect he is going to stand on the back fender to add some weight.

Wrong. Once his wife is in the truck he gets back into the boat and starts it up. His wife puts the truck in gear, he engages his throttle, and with a mighty roar easily moves up the ramp. He was using the airboat to help push the truck. Once he gets to the top of the ramp he shuts off the boat, his wife moves over in the seat, he gets in the truck and they leave.

Clever for sure. But what was even more amazing is that neither he or his wife ever said a word. This indicates they had done this before.

[ajholt7]

I don't like this thread since this is why my boat is now in the shop. The post about the trailer in too deep sounds alot like what happened to me.

[raythompson]

Clever Wet Dude

I am at the landing on the Clinch River near Oak Ridge without my boat just enjoying watching the craziness. I was not dissappointed.

Some guy drives up with his boat, backs down, slams on the brakes, and the boat slides off the trailer. The boat keeps going out into the lake as there is no rope to secure the boat. The fellow parks his truck and trailer very calmly. He then goes to the end of the dock, jumps in, and swims to his boat, gets in, and takes off. I figured it was a mistake on his part. I was wrong.

An hour later he returns. He approaches the dock, gets close, jumps out of the boat onto the dock and shoves the boat out into the lake. He then walks to his truck and backs down his trailer. He then goes to the dock, jumps in, and swims to his boat. He then easily puts the boat on the trailer, climbs over the front of the boat, latches it, gets into the bed of the truck, opens the door from the bed and gets into the seat. He then leaves the area.

It appears that this is how he always launches his boat when doing it alone.

[raythompson]

I don't like this thread since this is why my boat is now in the shop. The post about the trailer in too deep sounds alot like what happened to me.

It happened also to me. I got cockeyed on the trailer and being used to an outdrive where you simply back off I found out quickly this does not work so well on an inboard.

I managed to chew through a bunk and damaged a prop in the process. It was not a happy day as the front brakes on my truck were also dragging due to an incompetent brake job that kinked a brake line.

The family was waiting for me to explode. I didn't but I think I hurt myself by not exploding.

[Tequilasun]

I am at the landing on the Clinch River near Oak Ridge without my boat just enjoying watching the craziness. I was not dissappointed.

Some guy drives up with his boat, backs down, slams on the brakes, and the boat slides off the trailer. The boat keeps going out into the lake as there is no rope to secure the boat. The fellow parks his truck and trailer very calmly. He then goes to the end of the dock, jumps in, and swims to his boat, gets in, and takes off. I figured it was a mistake on his part. I was wrong.

An hour later he returns. He approaches the dock, gets close, jumps out of the boat onto the dock and shoves the boat out into the lake. He then walks to his truck and backs down his trailer. He then goes to the dock, jumps in, and swims to his boat. He then easily puts the boat on the trailer, climbs over the front of the boat, latches it, gets into the bed of the truck, opens the door from the bed and gets into the seat. He then leaves the area.

It appears that this is how he always launches his boat when doing it alone.

I used to do this exact thing all the time. I did it once right as a bunch of fishing boats were coming in from a tournament. The yells of "hey buddy, whoah man your boat is loose, et al" changed to cheers when the guy at the gas dock yelled. It's ok, seen him do it a hundred times."

The key is to have all your ducks in a row, and know how fast your boat came off the trailer.

Being a quick swimmer is a plus too.

[BrownClown]

I used to do this exact thing all the time. I did it once right as a bunch of fishing boats were coming in from a tournament. The yells of "hey buddy, whoah man your boat is loose, et al" changed to cheers when the guy at the gas dock yelled. It's ok, seen him do it a hundred times."

The key is to have all your ducks in a row, and know how fast your boat came off the trailer.

Being a quick swimmer is a plus too.

I've found that I'm fairly pathetic at getting this inboard boat on the trailer, so I do something similar, only in reverse. I get the boat about 5 feet from the back of the trailer and swim it on. I then winch it into place. After the scratch I put on the side from the guide poles, I prefer to be pathetic.

[Thomas Hohl]

OK I'm crying over here. These are some funny a$$ stories.

They bring back memories of some more I have seen. But the one two weekends ago probably took the cake.

At Travis, I'm launching my boat at a popular spot and the lake is VERY low. So the ramp is very steep and VERY long. The ramp has a turnaround about half way down that is way too small for a full sized truck and 20+ ft boat to turn around in. To make bad matters worse there is a 75' cliff off to one side of the turn around. Weeelll, I didn't see it but these to maintenance guys come up to me after I BARELY make the turnaround (in 4x4) without falling off the cliff and are staring at my Tige. One of them goes "hey that looks like the boat that went off the cliff last week". So I asked? The guys start laughing and tell me that last week two young guys were trying to make the turnaround and decided they weren't going to make it (you know were this is going). So they decide to unhook the boat without chocking the wheels and the boat and trailer roll right off the cliff (I'm not making this up) The guys said it took a week to get a crane out there to get the boat and trailer off the cliff.

[dogbert]

True story. At the boat ramp near my weekend place, this yahoo (there's a small community park there and we have some scary people living in the back of the subdivision, so we call them park lizards) puts in his aluminum boat with the tiller operated outboard. He suddenly starts hauling *** around this pier that was there and heading full speed towards shore. About 20' from the shoreline his boat suddenly sinks to the bottom....I guess he forgot the plug and by the time he realized it, his boat had taken on so much water (not to mention his fat @$$) that he couldn't get on plane to start draining the water. So there he sat in 4' of water....pretty much up to his shoulders...still holding the tiller on his outboard.

I just about fell out of my boat I was laughing so hard.

[River Runner]

One of the best forms of entertainment(for me anyway) is to go to a local lake peferably on a holiday weekend. For me its Lake Perris. Usually where all the newbies and PWC folk go.

Get yourself a sixer, a lawn chair, and pull up a seat at the launch ramp.

On one occasion saw a guy pull his truck down, tailgate in water. His buddy proceeds to pull up on a Sea-Doo and trys to load it. The Sea-Doo bottoms out on the tailgate and stops. Which the driver of the truck now gets onto the Sea-Doo halfway in the water and gasses it to get it the rest of the way into the truck.

Whoops...broke the rear glass right out of the truck and left a nice dent too!!!

[raythompson]

One of the best forms of entertainment(for me anyway) is to go to a local lake peferably on a holiday weekend.

Oh yeah. The craziness is awesome.

Not really a boat ramp story but a sad day for one individual which he deserved.

This guy was launching a pontoon boat and had no problems with the launch. When he was pulling the trailer out to park it he clips the rear of another parked car. Yeh the car was parked too close but that does not excuse what the guy did. He got out and looked and said "that idiot should not have parked there" and then went and parked his trailer. He left no note about causing the damage. So I decide to wait around for awhile longer.

Finally the owner of the car returns obviously riding in a friends boat. He sees the damage to his car and is not a happy camper. I say nothing. Finally his wife comes up to me and asks if I had seen what happened. I said I did and told the story. I then pointed out the trailer and vehicle that caused the damage. They called the police. I decided to leave after giving them my contact information.

About an hour later the police call me and ask me what happened. I told them what I had witnessed. The police said that fits with the situation. I then asked the police what was going to happen. The officer said the owner of the vehicle would be charged with hit and run and would more than likely loose his license for six months. Not to mention what it will do to his insurance rates for the vehicles.

[tktige']

NEVER underestimate a room full of stupid people!!

Wait!! Isn't that called Congress or The Senate!!

[tktige']

Good boat ramp story.

Saw a guy pulling a 23-24' beat up, full of water deck boat with a Ford Ranger 2wd Splash. Truck was a 4cyl.
The ramp was on a huge hill about a 8-10% grade for about 200yrds then gets flat at the top for parking. The ramp was very wet from the rain. This guy would rev up the engine and floor it up the ramp but the little truck could not make it all the way up the ramp. So he does this about four times but he still can't make it all the way up the ramp. Next thing I see is his buddy and this guys wife back another small pick-up (Toyota)
2wd down the boat ramp and tie a ski rope from the Toyota to the Ford Splash. This guys thinking 2 4cyl pickups = 8 cyl pickup. Wrong!!!! Started out good until the ski rope broke, Ford Splash still stuck on ramp spinning.
So this guy is going to try this again, except this time he puts wife in Toyota and buddy in Ford Splash. He is in between the Toyota and the Ford Splash tying the perfect knot when the wife pushes in the clutch of the Toyota and the truck slides back hard pinning him between the two trucks. This guy is really hurt bad he is screaming at the wife to pull forward, when she does the rope breaks, Ford Splash slides back into the water (almost all the way in) toyota goes flying up ramp half way. Our genius is left floundering in the middle of the ramp and his buddy is screamming call 911.
There are about 15 boats now at the ramp watching the circus here and someone did call 911. Next, I see the wife in Toyota come flying back down the boat ramp forward slamp on breaks and almost slide into hubby left lying on ramp. Buddy and wife pick up our genius throw him in the back and she drives off with him like a bat out of hell. Buddy jumps back into Ford splash and floors it, but can only make it about half way up the ramp, puts truck in park and leaves it sitting in the middle of a 4 lane launch ramp and then he leaves in a car. I am the next boat out, my buddies and I can't believe what just happened and that this jack A$$ would just leave the truck and boat sitting in the middle of the ramp. I pulled my boat out going around the Ford Splash through the grass with no problem. While we were wiping my boat down the EMTs pull in and ask us who called 911 and I told them what just happened and they just left.

[Thomas Hohl]

LMAO! This is better than Springer