I got a call from a friend of mine who bought a new fishing boat. he wanted to know if I would go Salmon fishing with him and help him launch the boat. It was his first boat. I met him at his house and we took of for the lake (Winnipausakee. We got to the boat ramp with no problems. It was a very steep ramp. Probably 20 degrees of pitch. He asked me if i minded backing it down the ramp because he wasn't good at backing up trailers. I told him no problem. He got out of the truck and got all the stuff ready and took of the tie downs. What I didn't realize was that he took all the straps off including the bow strap (Big no no). I assumed he knew not to do that (wrong). I started backing down the ramp and I got a little out of line and decided to hit the brakes. There she went, right off the trailer on to the cement ramp (bang). This was a 17' Sea Nymph with a 50HP Johnson. Not huge but not light either. You should have seen the look on his face when it came off the trailer. The impact punched a about a 2 inch hole in the transom and scraped the crap out of the hull. Well there we were blocking the ramp and a keeping a lot of fisherman from their fishing. We got about 6 guys on each side of that boat and lifted it enough to crank it back on to the trailer. Stories not over, after all the fisherman left my friend says to me "The holes not that big, I bet if we leave the bilge pump on we can go fishing." I wasn't sure but we had driven all that way. So we launched the boat and started away from the dock. We didn't get 50 yards and water was coming through the floor. We had to do a quick about face and head for the ramp. We barely made it before that sucker sank. What a ****** getting it on the trailer.
