Great advice. My wife asked to be taught. She spent a full day and
nearly a tank of gas backing our truck and boat trailer around our lake
cabin neighborhood. That was about 32 years ago.

She can back a boat trailer better than most men and every woman I have
seen doing the same thing. She and I take great pleasure in launching
and recovery at a busy ramp with minimum time and effort. The
instructions were low-keyed, and though I have been known to raise my
voice in frustration or anger, I never do so with my wife, my light of
my life for 33 years.

Try it. You and she will be glad you did!





wrote in message
...
On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 10:49:59 -0700 (PDT), "Robert M. Gary"
wrote:

I'm trying to think of the best way to coordinate solo launch/recovery
at a busy dock. We have a very busy lake here. There are 4 ramps with
2 docks. The docks are only big enough for the active ramps (you
couldn't leave the boat at the dock without disrupting launches. My
wife can just barely drive the SUV so she certainly cannot drive the
car with the trailer and certainly cannot drive the boat. On a busy
day there is a waiting area where cars wait in line for the busy
ramps.

To launch I figure I could tie up to the dock, park the car and run
back to the dock. I could probably do this in the time it takes the
next guy to back his trailer down the long ramp (very, very long, the
water is low).

However, I'm not sure how to best recover. Usually people come to the
dock, drop off the car driver and then go back out to the water
waiting for their turn. The trailer driver them goes and gets into
line for a ramp. How can I do this w/o taking up dock space necessary
for operations? I was thinking of perhaps just anchoring off shore and
swimming to the dock and then swimming back out to the boat once I get
the trailer.

As you can tell I'm very sensitive to not disrupting people. I'm
trying not to be the annoying guy that everyone loves to hate.

-robert

Take your wife and the car/trailer combo to some deserted parking lot
and have her practice, practice, practice. Do NOT raise you voice ever
for any reason during this practice. Take her for practice as many
times as it takes before SHE feels comfortable. Then go to a launch
ramp on a day when it is lousy weather, so there isn't much activity
and do a bunch of practice drills on the ramp. Once she has that down,
do some launches and retrievals. She'll end up being better at this
than you, because she will have had a lot more practice.

Later, you can do the same thing with boat handling skills.

Swimming in a busy launch area is a REALLY bad idea.