How To Back Up a Boat Trailer.

A few years ago, my wife and I decided to become “lake rats.” Technically, what that means is, we bought something that floats with a motor so you spend all your free time near water. In our case it was a pristine 1996 SeaDoo GTX on a single-place ShoreLand’r trailer. We named it LOBO 1. The LOBO being our initials and the 1 standing for our first boat, assuming we would have LOBO 2 and so on. Lobo is also the Spanish word for wolf, for those of you who don’t press 2 after you call someone. We’re up to LOBO 6 now.

We hooked our new, used, jetski, as they are called, to our Dodge pickup and took off to our nearest state park with a lake. We set up camp on a nice spot on the beach and then drove over to the boat ramp to launch the boat. Launching a boat requires the backing up of the vehicle down a ramp with a trailer attached. For those of you who do this with little or no problem, simply, I hate you.

As I start backing into my approach down the boat ramp, my wife takes a position outside of my angle of view in the side mirror. She then starts making twirling motions with her index finger pointing into the air, first twirling to the left, then twirling to the right. How do I know this since she is outside of my angle of view? Because I screamed out the window, “I CAN’T FUCKING SEE YOU!” Which caused her to move into my angle of view, and I saw the twirling to the right, although it was a different finger, just before the trailer jackknifed behind the truck.

I pulled the truck forward and managed to straighten out the trailer behind me, and back down the double ramp, pretty much using both lanes, and completely ignoring my wife’s twirling to the right and twirling to the left. I got the SeaDoo in the water and launched my wife (okay I know how that sounded, but she was on the SeaDoo) who promptly sped away. I hoped I hadn’t ruined the weekend with my outburst, earlier.

I went back to camp and waited, and waited, and waited. It was starting to get dark and I was starting to panic. Our first trip out on the SeaDoo and we were going to violate Rule #1, “Do not ride after sunset.” Okay, I was worried about my wife too. I had just jumped into the truck to go to the front gatehouse and get the Game Warden when, in the dim light, the SeaDoo beached itself on the shore.

“I got lost,” she said.

“You still mad at me?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

And that was all I said. I know better.

We had a nice dinner, something she called Girl Scout Stew. I”ll tell you how to make it sometime. We had a real nice next day riding the SeaDoo, and getting some sun. Okay, drinking some Jack and Coke too. Okay, drinking a lot of Jack and Coke. Just as a sidebar, you get a lot braver riding a SeaDoo after you’ve had a few Jack and Cokes. You can go airborne on those things. But then, that is the real Rule #1 “Do not drink and then drive a SeaDoo.” But let’s not go there.

Sunday morning we break camp and go to the boat ramp to load the SeaDoo back on the trailer. Again, this involves backing a trailer behind a truck down a single lane ramp into the water with three other trucks and trailers attempting to do it at the same time because everybody’s trying to leave to go home on Sunday morning. Except now, I can’t see the boat trailer at all behind the truck, because it doesn’t stick up over the tailgate of the truck anywhere, like it did when the boat was on it. You people that do this without a problem, you’re lying, and I hate you.

The wife takes up a position behind the trailer, after beaching the SeaDoo, and then in her sweetest voice says, “Can you see me?” I can see through the sarcasm, that’s for sure.

I start backing the trailer I can’t see, down one of the middle ramps next to a 4 X 4 Dodge pickup that looks like it just came from a monster truck rally with a 30’ trailer behind it. He zips down the ramp, picks up his boat, and starts back up the ramp while I’m still criss-crossing the trailer back and forth between the lanes, not getting very far.

My wife is back there twirling frantically to the left, I think. The next thing I see is the trailer sticking out perpendicular from the side of the truck and the monster truck is about to drive over it. I quickly pull forward and straighten it out.

Now, I should preface this next part with a little description of the scene. There are people everywhere, loading up boats, wiping them down after extraction. There are boats docked or beached waiting to be picked up. And all of these people are watching a little red truck with a tiny white SeaDoo trailer try to back down a boat ramp, because that’s entertainment. After the third attempt and subsequent jackknife of the trailer, I jumped out of the truck and screamed back at my poor wife, while twirling my index finger high over my head to the right.

“WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS MEAN?”

Then I started muttering, “I can’t fucking see it. How am I going to back it up? I can’t fucking see it.”

I got back in the truck and started back down the ramp one more time. Same result. The blood pressure went ballistic. I jumped out of the truck, unhitched the little SeaDoo trailer and walked the son-of-bitch down the ramp into the water. Then I walked back, got in the truck and backed it down and hooked the trailer back up. The crowd watching truly enjoyed this.

It’s been described to me that the best way to back up a trailer is to put your left hand at the bottom of the steering wheel and move your hand in the direction you want the trailer to go. I tried that, but you have to see the trailer in order for it to work anyway, and it doesn’t work all that well because I’m not left-handed. You can’t put your right hand on the steering wheel, because you have to turn around in the seat to see the boat trailer jackknife. Most of you that have ever attempted to master the art of backing a trailer, know what I’m talking about. The rest of you that have no problem doing this, we hate you.

So the next weekend, I came prepared with removable flags for the corners. I found some of those flags they put on ATVs with those 6’ fiberglass poles, and I screwed them on with a bolt and wing nut to each of the back corners of the trailer. It looked pretty stupid but it worked great. I could see the flags over the back of the tailgate and know where the trailer was while I was backing it. Although, once I got the trailer in the water, I had to take them off before I could load the SeaDoo. This, of course, involved underwater removal. The crowd around the boat ramp still found it all pretty entertaining.

Two years and a lot of underwater removal later, I accidentally left the tailgate down on the truck before I started backing up the trailer. Do you know what I could see clearly through the open tailgate? Yep, the trailer!