Good Day For A Boat Ride

I’ve wanted to get my Bennington pontoon boat off of the scissor trailer that it has been on and onto the regular pontoon boat trailer that it came with. The only reason I bought the scissor trailer was that our garage door is not high enough to get the boat in and out, so we have to put it on the scissor trailer, lower it way down, get it inside the garage, and then we put flat dollies under the pontoons, take the trailer out, and push the boat over into the corner of the garage.

That’s an awful lot of work, and I’ve just decided that for now, at least, I wanted to put it on the pontoon trailer and leave it outside. The scissor trailer is good for what it does, but it’s also very unstable and one has to be very careful towing a boat on it. They’ve been known to slide sideways and fall off if you take a curve or corner too fast.

Yesterday afternoon my buddy Jesse Bolton and I went over to the storage yard here in our little subdivision where the pontoon trailer was and hooked to the back of his Laramie pickup, then we hooked the scissor trailer with the boat on it to the back of my truck and went down to the private boat launch in our little community. The plan was to put the boat in from the scissor trailer, and when we brought it back out, to put it on the regular trailer.

While I took a truck driving course once when I was in the Army and got to where I could back up an eighteen-wheeler pretty well, for the life of me, I can’t back up a short trailer. Yeah, I know all about putting your hand on the bottom of the steering wheel and all that, but I just need a lot more practice. So when we got to the launch, Jesse parked his truck off to the side and took my place in my truck, and backed the boat down and into the water.

Then he and I took it for a ride, the first time it’s been in the water in months. I let Jesse drive so I could just sit back and enjoy the scenery, both the water, and the girls in skimpy swimsuits on other boats. But he wasn’t complaining, he really liked the boat and was having a great time with it. We went a couple of miles down the river, just taking our time since this is a No Wake Zone due to the manatees, then turned around and came back. We pulled up to the dock and our friend Dennis was there to help hold the lines while Jesse got his truck and backed the pontoon trailer down the ramp.

There was a little bit of current there, and I wasn’t doing very well, so it took a time or two to get the boat lined up and onto the trailer. Once I did, we repeated the process, Jesse driving his truck with the boat on it and backing it up next to the garage on our parking apron like it was child’s play, and me taking the scissor trailer over to the storage yard to put it in the space where the other trailer had been. Are you confused yet?

The regular trailer is much more stable and easier to use because we don’t have to crank it up and down every time we want to go someplace. When I have some time, I plan to hook it to my truck, go down to the parking area at the launch ramp, and practice backing up. I won’t even put it in the water, I’ll just use the big open area to try to learn how to back it up when I need to. Jesse says it just takes practice, and I darn sure need a lot of it!

The last chore for the day was to flush the outboard motor and hose down the boat and trailer to wash off the saltwater. Then I came inside and took a shower while Terry made dinner. After that, we watched a couple more episodes of 1883, and just like the first five episodes, every minute of them was good. Taylor Sheridan is an amazing writer, no question about it.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us. Don’t they make any exceptions for those of us who are terrible at backing a boat trailer down the ramp?

Congratulations Darhl Stultz, winner of our drawing for an autographed copy of The Vigilante by W.R. Hill. It’s the tale of a former CIA covert operative who left the business and settled down in a picturesque small New England town, wanting nothing more than a quiet life as a homemaker and a mother. But when an act of violence shatters that dream, she puts her old skills to work again, taking the law into her own hands. We had 72 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?