Honor Among Trailer Sailors

Categories Supplemental Thoughts

I was at the marina just after dusk, ostensibly to put a better lock on the trailer coupler but mostly to see if they’d actually winterized the outboard yet. Our boat is stored on right next to the ramp, and while I was fiddling with my lock in the dark a couple guys were trying to get a cool looking little sailboat on a trailer.

They were cursing a bit and wading around in the water way more than conceivably necessary so I asked if they needed some light.

The guy responded, “Uh, yeah…” with a tone as if I was obligated to help him and had been shirking my duty up until that point.

I let it go because I figured maybe I misheard him, or maybe he was just frustrated with the boat and it came out wrong, so I went over to my truck and drove it around to where my headlights were shining where they could see.

I went back to checking out my boat and they were shortly able to get theirs out of the water. They’d just pulled it up a bit, presumably so that they could prep it for the road.  I intended to go ask them what kind of boat it was because I don’t know many sailors and their boat reminded me of a Carl Alberg design, like a Pearson Ensign without the full keel, but I questioned whether or not I should be dropping designers names as if I knew more than three.

In the moments it took me to resolve this in my head, I realized that they were totally gone. My truck was sitting there with its lights shining on the empty ramp and these guys took off without so much as a “thanks” or a “hey, you can stop wasting your gasoline on my incompetence.”

We need to move.


Addendum: It’s been suggested to me that maybe they were stealing the boat. I’m not sure which option makes me feel worse about the world: that people would steal or that people would just generally be jerks for no reason.

"Prepare to fend off the bridge abutment."