Trailering Your Boat

The family holiday had gone well, no major mishaps to mar a decent week of water sports and fishing. We had said our good-byes to our friends at the lake and headed with the boat back down the narrow wooded road that leads out from the cottages to the Trans Canada Highway east of Kenora, Ontario.

While the road was well maintained it was narrow, demanding total concentration when pulling a boat and trailer that was hugging both edges of the road. With the family onboard in the truck, most of the steep sections of the road had been traversed when it happened. One huge crack and the next moment my boat and trailer were perched on the side of the ditch. Startled, my wife and I jumped out of the truck to survey the damage. As we looked on the passenger side, we could see that the wheel and axle on the starboard side of my boat trailer had been pushed back, separating the wheel cover from the front u-bolt. This had pushed the two other u-bolts holding the axle assembly towards the back of the trailer, totally offsetting everything. Trying to figure out why it had happened we ventured a short distance back up to the road to find the offending object, a tree stump that had caught the corner of the fender.

While we sent our son back down the road at a jog for help we started to try and figure out how to rectify the problem. Luckily the axle wasn't damaged and when our friends showed up with in a short time with a series of hydraulic jacks, shovel, boards and sledgehammers, we managed get the right side of the trailer off the ground, the two u-bolts holding the axle on that side loosened and slid back into place. After retightening the u-bolts we drove the trailer back on the road and up into a level area where we could re-measure the axle from each side to make sure it was back to square. That done, we managed to make it safely back to Winnipeg, another valuable lesson learned with special thanks to our friends the Cederwalls for all their help.

After having put over two thousand kilometres on that same rig over the last three weeks it once again reinforced to me the need for constant vigilance and maintenance to keep you and your equipment safe. In the back box of my truck I carry a full tool box along with a grease gun for any contingency, constantly checking the trailer bearings for heat and topping up them up with grease. Judging by the number of boats and trailers I seen every summer pulled over on the side of the highway, and left abandoned there is a need for more awareness out there.

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