My Dad's New Boat - Part 2

Click here if you missed Part 1 of My Dad's New Boat.

Mom and Dad's Cabin

We needed to take the boat out of water in order to install the new propeller that was personally delivered by the boat sales guy. That's pretty impressive service when a sales guy personally delivers a part! Mom and I thought we could handle driving the boat about a mile across the lake, so Dad took the truck and trailer to meet us at the ramp. Dad had given Mom a quick driving lesson on the new boat. We got it off the lift and pointed toward the ramp. We knew something was wrong right away because the nose of the boat went right up in the air. We stopped and tried again. I got in the nose of the boat to try to weigh it down. It was scary up there! Almost everyone was out on their docks because it was the 4^thof July weekend. We were obviously having trouble, and there was nowhere for us to hide. Mom said we needed to get it up to 20 miles per hour, and it would level out. I was still up (literally) in the nose of the boat with the whole lake watching. We got it up to about 18 miles per hour, but I yelled to stop because I seriously thought we were going to flip over backwards. I bet we were moving along at about a forty degree angle.

We decided to take it slow, and stopped quite often to try to figure out the problem. Neither one of us had our cell phones. We finally got within sight of the ramp, and my dad was standing there, frantically waving his arms in an up and down motion. He was yelling something that sounded like, “Swim!” We looked at each other and decided that was a bad idea. When we got a little closer, we heard, “Trim!” That didn’t mean anything to me, but a lightbulb went off for Mom. She remembered that we should have put the trim down, which lowers the motor down into the water. That made a huge difference!

The weekend did get better. The new propeller worked great and we had many hours of tubing and skiing. And I don’t think my mom or I will ever forget about the trim. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way!

My favorite lake in all the land!