The Upstory

Raise your hand if you’ve ever loaded a boat onto a trailer. Yeah. It’s simple, right?

You’re behind the wheel of the boat. The lake is behind you. The boat ramp is in front of you. The boat trailer is optimally positioned in the water and ready for your approach.

You can see the exact spot on the trailer where the boat is supposed to go. You are steering toward that spot.

If you’re me, you can also see your husband standing there waiting to clip the boat to the trailer and winch it into place.

No problem. The stars have aligned.

And then, for absolutely no reason at all (insert theme from “Jaws”), the boat begins to drift sideways. Suddenly you are not sliding smoothly onto the boat trailer. No, indeed. You are about to hit the boat trailer guide post and either break it or punch a hole in the side of your boat. Or maybe you’re going to bang into the side of the really expensive boat next to you which also is attempting to load on to its trailer.

People in the boat with you are grabbing their life vests and expressing a great deal of excitement. You can see your husband and read his thought bubble which says: Not again. I cannot believe how bad you are at this. Bad word. Bad word.

And then you do what you always do in this situation: You throw the motor into reverse and hit the throttle. The engine gives a mighty roar which draws everyone’s attention to the new drama unfolding at the dock. The boat shoots backwards and, if you’re lucky, none of your guests are standing up. If they are, they suddenly find themselves sitting down — on each other or the floor.

I just have the one job. But in all my years of doing it I never know if I’m going to nail it or fail it.

How to jackknife a trailer

When we got our boat, more than 20 years ago, I had no idea what boating was all about.

I knew it wasn’t like driving a car but other than that I didn’t have a clue. I knew nothing about the calamities brought on by waves, wind, underwater obstacles, the absence of driving lanes, the presence of willy-nilly boat traffic, and my complete and utter lack of skill.

Glenn, on the other hand, had two boats before he married me and moved to Arizona. He had lived in Louisiana all his life and had cut his teeth on the massive Intracoastal Canal with commercial traffic, where he dodged tugboats and cargo ships all the while pulling water skiers and possibly hydrating with adult beverages.

Glenn knows how to drive a boat, how to load and unload a boat, how to do emergency repairs, and how to tow it back and forth between our house and Canyon Lake, 30 miles highlighted by switchbacks and blind curves.

When it became apparent that my superpower was not loading the boat onto the trailer, Glenn had me try the other boat-owner job which is to back the trailer down the ramp.  He knew better than to attempt this during the unloading of our 22-foot deck boat. So, he had me try it with the empty trailer.

My job was to go get our SUV and boat trailer, drive it to the boat ramp, and back it down the boat ramp to the water’s edge. Captain Glenn would then drive the boat up and onto the trailer.

Haaaaah! You all see what’s coming right?

Let me tell you that there are hundreds of ways to jackknife a trailer when you’re backing up. I know because I did all of them.

Meanwhile, traffic was backing up at the launch line where drivers (mostly male, sorry this isn’t sexist, it’s a fact) waited their turn to load/unload their boats.

There are multiple lanes at the boat ramp and I was clogging all of them as I swerved from side to side trying to straighten out jackknife after jackknife.

It was probably fun to watch at first, but after about 15 minutes the launch line was going nuts. (I have no idea what Glenn’s thought bubble was that day, but I’ll bet it was a doozy.)

Honking didn’t help nor did shouted instructions. Finally, one driver jumped out of his truck and offered (insisted, actually) to back up the trailer. He saved the day and cleared the boat ramp.

What happened next will forever live in infamy. It was the cattle stampede of boats. It was every man for himself as trucks and trailers, some empty and picking up boats and some full and dropping off boats, veered all over the ramp. Everyone was making up for lost time. It was a tangled mess but, as blind luck would have it, there were no collisions.

And that, folks, is the last time I ever tried to back up the boat trailer.

Years later, Family Guy made a video that shows what backing a trailer can look like.

Our Titanic moment

Another time we invited Cody’s fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Carroll, and his family out for a day on the lake. Between us and the Carrolls there were 10 people on board. (Our boat is rated for 11 so, like Titanic, we were nearly at capacity.)

We were well-equipped for fun with a variety of water skis, an inflatable for the kids to ride, super-soakers for water fights, and so forth.

Shortly after launching, I noticed the boat seemed lethargic and unresponsive. As I guided it around the dock waiting for Glenn to return from parking the trailer, I wondered if it was because there were so many of us on board.

When Glenn arrived, he immediately knew something was very wrong. For one thing, the engine was making weird noises and when he popped the engine cover a geyser spouted like Old Faithful. Glenn informed us that the boat was taking on water. Yikes! Those are the words that come right before “and we’re sinking.”

Evidently the Captain, who in all fairness had a lot on his plate that day, had forgotten to insert the drain plug. According to Maritime Google this is one of the most common mistakes in boating. (For those of you wondering why a boat would have a removable plug in the first place, let me explain: When you leave the lake, you remove the plug so all the water that has sloshed into the boat can drain out. Then, when you return to the lake on your next outing, you put the plug back in. If you remember.)

Anyway, Glenn started working the problem while I grabbed life vests, rearranged the deck chairs, and instructed the orchestra to keep playing. (Mind you, the life vests were for the adults. The kids already had theirs’ on, per Arizona law.)

Next, the bilge pumps weren’t working so we couldn’t get rid of the water flooding into the hull. Lucky for us Glenn knew what to do. He put the boat in high gear and ran it across the lake which (long complicated explanation that only an engineer cares about) caused the water to drain out.

Then Glenn wasted no time in diving off the boat, plug in hand, to insert the stopper, conveniently located in a hard-to-reach place, and prevent new water from re-entering.

Like the geese in Charlotte’s Web, we all cheered. We picked up where we left off and were having boating fun right up until we stopped for our picnic lunch. We anchored and (Spoiler alert: Nooo don’t turn off the motor!) we turned off the motor.

Of course, after lunch with everyone ready for action, the boat wouldn’t start.  Evidently some electrical stuff was still wet. Frivolities ceased momentarily while we pondered our plight. Then, hey-ho we turned the boat into a dive island and super soaker battle platform and festivities resumed with gusto.

Finally, when we were ready to call it a day, we hailed an accommodating boat captain who was nice enough to tow us back to the dock.

When you get busted by Lake Patrol, speak your truth, but don’t know the facts

So, here’s what happened. I was driving the boat, Glenn was sitting on the gunwale (upper edge of the side of the boat) behind me, and my co-workers were on board.

They brought coolers packed with lunches and malt beverages and everyone had been picnicking and hydrating. If I was paying attention, I would have noticed that the empty bottles were piling up in a small, open hold below the seats where everyone was sitting.

But I wasn’t paying attention. I was driving the boat. Suddenly, Lake Patrol officers sounded their horn and pulled me over, I knew not why. I wasn’t driving recklessly, or towing in a no-tow zone, or creating a wake when I shouldn’t.

Turns out that for safety reasons you can’t sit on the gunwale when you’re underway. Glenn wasn’t in trouble but I was. I was driving thus I was the captain and the captain is always responsible for what happens on the boat. Remember that.

While they had me stopped, they quizzed me on Arizona Boater Equipment Safety: 

Do the number of life vests on board meet or exceed the number of people on board? Yes. In fact, we have life vests for people under the age of one and every age after that, for youngsters, oldsters, hipsters, tall, short, wide, narrow – we have plenty of life vests for everyone.

Do you have a fire extinguisher? Yes indeed. Here it is, Officer.

Uh, ma’am, this fire extinguisher is so far past its expiration date that it’s inoperable. You can’t be on the water until you get a new one.

Do you have a life preserver?  Uhhh, well we have lots of flotation stuff that can serve as a life preserver.  

Ma’am you need an actual life preserver in case anyone gets in trouble in the water and needs a flotation device. You can’t be on the water without one.

Mind you, the Lake Patrol officers had secured our boat to their boat while we ran through this growing list of reasons why we would have to leave the lake sooner rather than later.

My colleagues and Glenn had a front-row seat to this little drama which was attracting some attention and boat traffic like car traffic always slows around the scene where something interesting is happening.

So, I had an audience and with that in mind, brace for the next question.

Do you have glass bottles on board this boat? No sir, we do not.

And I said this with all the confidence in the world and while making good eye contact because I wasn’t paying attention to who was drinking what, or how much, or out of what kind of container.

But my crew knew. And they were holding their breath and quietly shifting their legs to best cover the pile of glass bottles in the open hold underneath where they were sitting.

The officer must have had his doubts because he said, Are you sure?

Situational awareness is almost always a good thing to have, but in this case my lack of it was actually beneficial. With a clear conscience I assured him that we did not have any glass bottles on board and then I nearly gave my friends and the real Captain a heart attack when I said, “Would you like to check the coolers?”

That convinced him that we were clean and he declined my offer, but he did want us to know that there is a fine for having glass bottles at the lake. And it’s a steep fine: $90 per bottle.

Holy Court Cost, Batman!

So, he wrote me tickets for the expired fire extinguisher and the missing life preserver, and told me to brush up on my boating safety. And now we have a working fire extinguisher, a life preserver, and beverage containers not made of glass. Oh, and we no longer sit on the gunwale while the boat is underway.