Greg D.
Contributor
Spent nine hours out today lifting towing and placing a boat back on a trailer.
You may have heard on the News about an accident on Billy Clapp lake that put 3 in the hospital and one in the ground yesterday. If not here is the short version, man driving boat at about 45 mph kid in the back gets nervous and heads up front to get a life jacket, accidently kicks the drivers sandals from where they were sitting and both the driver and the kid reach for them. Meanwhile the boat is headed strait for the bank and crash.... I dont think there was any witnesses and that was the story given the SO. All were transported from the scene to the hospital last night today we went to get the boat and everything else.
0800 sharp we hit the road, we were at the lake by 0830 geared up and on the boat by 0930. Time gets a little hazy at this point but we got to the boat at I'd say 9:45 and 3 divers in the water by 10:00. The boat was still up on the rocks with the stearn still in the water. We put a few lift bags on the back and floated it. That got the front back in the water and it floated for a while till the seats broke free and it sank quick, the front sort of looked like swiss cheese underneath and the top was separating from the hull, what a mess. Without a solid bow hook or cleets on the front there was nothing to put a lift bag on. we ended up wedgeing a ski into a compartment and tieing a lift bag to that. we then rigged ropes from the back of the baot to the front to tow with. We put two ropes arround the bot to help hold the top on and to help hold the tow ropes in place. I'd say all this took place by 11:45 or so.
We had two boats on scene and with how slow the tow boat was gonna go we decided to wait for the jet boat to come back, well when the got there we tossed all the junk that we had pulled on shore in that boat and decided to wait for it to come back againthis is say 12:00. by 13:00 we thought they had forgot about us, turns out they had some mechanical issues and were delayed, they sent us a private citezen to pick us up and we headed back to the launch.
Halfway there we catch up with the tow boat and fint that the boat has flipped over and is being towed upside down :11: an the 1000# lift bag that was in the center is gone :11: well before we caught up with them we had seen something whit by the shore but had not payed it much attention.... back we go. upon getting the bag we went back to the tow boat and reatached it to the rope running arround the boat.
Now the fun began, trying to get a stucturally unsound boat turned over and put on a trailer I wont go into detail because this thread is to long arlready but we tied one rope to the dok and put a winch cable on the boat and just flipped it, had to refloat it, use the winch to let the trailer far enough into the water to set the boat on and then pull it out with the winch.... ug
Got home at 1800... face a slight shade of red
Oh yeah did I mention that we found 3 half gallons of Vodka, one which was 2/3 empty and one half gallon of whiskey full, tonic water, plastic cups, coca cola oh and cpri sun for the kids.... stupid people never cease to amaze me.
You may have heard on the News about an accident on Billy Clapp lake that put 3 in the hospital and one in the ground yesterday. If not here is the short version, man driving boat at about 45 mph kid in the back gets nervous and heads up front to get a life jacket, accidently kicks the drivers sandals from where they were sitting and both the driver and the kid reach for them. Meanwhile the boat is headed strait for the bank and crash.... I dont think there was any witnesses and that was the story given the SO. All were transported from the scene to the hospital last night today we went to get the boat and everything else.
0800 sharp we hit the road, we were at the lake by 0830 geared up and on the boat by 0930. Time gets a little hazy at this point but we got to the boat at I'd say 9:45 and 3 divers in the water by 10:00. The boat was still up on the rocks with the stearn still in the water. We put a few lift bags on the back and floated it. That got the front back in the water and it floated for a while till the seats broke free and it sank quick, the front sort of looked like swiss cheese underneath and the top was separating from the hull, what a mess. Without a solid bow hook or cleets on the front there was nothing to put a lift bag on. we ended up wedgeing a ski into a compartment and tieing a lift bag to that. we then rigged ropes from the back of the baot to the front to tow with. We put two ropes arround the bot to help hold the top on and to help hold the tow ropes in place. I'd say all this took place by 11:45 or so.
We had two boats on scene and with how slow the tow boat was gonna go we decided to wait for the jet boat to come back, well when the got there we tossed all the junk that we had pulled on shore in that boat and decided to wait for it to come back againthis is say 12:00. by 13:00 we thought they had forgot about us, turns out they had some mechanical issues and were delayed, they sent us a private citezen to pick us up and we headed back to the launch.
Halfway there we catch up with the tow boat and fint that the boat has flipped over and is being towed upside down :11: an the 1000# lift bag that was in the center is gone :11: well before we caught up with them we had seen something whit by the shore but had not payed it much attention.... back we go. upon getting the bag we went back to the tow boat and reatached it to the rope running arround the boat.
Now the fun began, trying to get a stucturally unsound boat turned over and put on a trailer I wont go into detail because this thread is to long arlready but we tied one rope to the dok and put a winch cable on the boat and just flipped it, had to refloat it, use the winch to let the trailer far enough into the water to set the boat on and then pull it out with the winch.... ug
Got home at 1800... face a slight shade of red
Oh yeah did I mention that we found 3 half gallons of Vodka, one which was 2/3 empty and one half gallon of whiskey full, tonic water, plastic cups, coca cola oh and cpri sun for the kids.... stupid people never cease to amaze me.
