Post Season Practice
Published: Saturday, September 15, 2012 7:00 am
By: Dan Armitage, Buckeye Sportsman Radio
After four unsuccessful attempts at backing his trailer straight down the ramp to where his boat and wife were patiently waiting after a Labor Day of boating on Lake Erie, the driver was at the end of his rope. In a fit of controlled frustration, he exited the SUV, marched to the back of the jack-knifed trailer, picked it up with his bare hands and moved it manually into position, lining it up directly behind the Tahoe. Aligned with the tow vehicle, he made a flawless final backing approach down to the water, loaded the boat and spouse, and was off.
Manhandling a boat trailer isn’t an option for most of us; the combination of adrenalin and a diminutive trailer combined to make manual repositioning an alternative for the fellow I watched. The shortcut he took is closed to most of us when it comes time to demonstrate basic boating skills in real time and in real situations. To master the moves that make us proficient boaters, we must learn how to approach a dock, back a boat, pull into a slip or come alongside a fuel dock through trial and error. We need to revisit the process each time we succumb to “two-foot-itis” and find ourselves at the helm of a new boat until we become familiar with its moves and how to manage them.
One of the best times to get in some practical practice in real life conditions is approaching, at a point in the season when boating activity is minimal and the ramifications of, well, ramming another boat with a miscalculated approach, are minimized as well. And because it comes at the end of a season when you are more likely to be “up” on your boat handling skills than any other time, following several months of practical experience on the water, it is the best time to hone the skills you’d like to improve on and attempt some new moves that you might never attempt when the boating is busy.
Take, for example, the act of pulling up to a fuel dock. During much of the season at popular Great Lakes ports, you would need to take a day off work and boat during a weekday to hope to find your local fuel dock deserted – or at least devoid enough of boats -- to allow you to make a variety of approaches to practice skills that will be required next season when you might be forced to wedge your boat into place in a crowd. The same is true for approaching courtesy docks and boat slips.
Once you have practiced a maneuver in calm and otherwise controlled circumstances and are comfortable with your handling abilities, try going to different locations along the waterfront to get experience in making approaches, backing, and pulling alongside docks with the wind or current coming from a variety of directions.
Autumn is typically a time of year when you don’t have to wait long for a breeze to spring up, and you might get the chance to practice your skills in a stiff wind. If that’s the case, try putting up your canvas and see how your boat’s performance and handling ability is affected by the extra surface area of a Bimini or camper top that is exposed to the wind; you might be surprised and learn something that might come in handy during the boating season when the breeze builds. For example, you might discover that you need a larger anchor to keep your battened-down craft in place in the face of a major blow, that your Bimini top buckles at wide open throttle or that you need to start your ramp approach from far upwind to align the boat with your trailer at the apron.
The slow post season is a good time to practice tow vehicle skills as well. When was the last time you had a launch lane all to yourself without a line of impatient onlookers awaiting their turn? You can practice both the launching and loading process as well as boat and trailer maneuvering with little threat to the trailers, tow vehicles or time-table of fellow boaters.
Part of the enjoyment of boat ownership is mastering the skills that are required to make us safe, efficient watercraft operators. Much of what we need to know can be learned from books, but the hands-on skills are acquired only through experience. The best time to attend the practical skills school of hard knocks is after other schools are in session as well.
