How did that famous American Civil War quote from Admiral Farragut go – “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”?
The transom on this old fiberglass boat was mushy. That means you could push in on it and it would bend and give. In police work, they call that a clue. The wood inside that fiberglass was totally rotten. Today’s boats use a solid or composite transom material that is impervious to rot. Twenty years ago, most transoms and stringers in a fiberglass boat were still made of wood. Once water got to that wood, the rotting process began. They call it “dry rot” for some reason, but it has always been wet and damp on any that I tried to repair.
On our trip, we had to drive about seventy miles to reach the ramp where we planned to launch. The trailer on this rig was probably in worse shape than the boat itself – rusty and ragged.
About twenty miles into the trip, we had our first problem, a flat tire on the old trailer. This was no ordinary flat tire; this was a tire coming completely off the rim. Luckily, we were close to one of those big box stores that sell everything. A short time later we had purchased and mounted a new tire and rim and we were on our way again
“Damn the torpedoes…”
Why we didn’t think about the other trailer tire is beyond me, but suffice it to say, we didn’t. As it turned out, the other tire held up all the way to the boat ramp.
Launching the boat is usually quite easy. We were at a big, wide ramp, one capable of handling eight to ten launches simultaneously. The flat tire had put us behind in on our schedule and we were there with quite a number of other boats – lots of people watching each other.
My father had a peculiar hobby when he retired. He would take a lawn chair and a cooler and go to the local public boat ramp on a Saturday morning, and watch the launching circus. I say circus, because weekend boaters usually include first-timers, and the launching sequence can produce some really funny situations. Had he been at this ramp on this morning, he would have been laughing.
We backed the boat down until the water reached the bottom edge of the tire rims on the trailer. This was pretty standard on a trailer that old. Not many float-on trailers were in use when this one was built. The idea was to keep the saltwater off the wheel bearings. This trailer had rollers, and the procedure was to actually “launch” the boat off the trailer, allowing it to roll down into the water. Only, the boat would not budge.
We figured that the rollers must have been frozen and would not turn. So we went to the front of the trailer, put our shoulders on each side of the bow, and began to heave. The bow lifted off the trailer, but the boat would not move. We heaved again – the boat still refused to move. We asked a neighboring launcher to help heave – the boat still refused to move.
Now we had four or five men standing in front of the trailer, all offering suggestions. The best suggestion, we thought, was to back the trailer into the water a little farther and let the transom float up. That would surely free the sticking boat. We failed to see the torpedo that was heading straight for us again.
