eeboater
Commander
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2004
- Messages
- 2,644
We went out on the water yesterday and I had a group of friends as well as my brother. The ramp was a bit busy, and we collectively decided that it would be best if we just loaded into the boat, let my brother back the boat in then I'd just pull away from the ramp and wait for him to return to pick him up at the courtesy dock.
Well, he came running back to the courtesy dock and said that he needed my help.... he his someones trailer.
Of course at that moment about 300 swear words went through my head. I envisioned him smacking into on of those Ranger Boat trailers which appear to be 90% plastic and 10% steel.
I don't want to use the term luckily here, but what he did was cut the corner too sharp and the left fender of my trailer smashed against the right fender of his trailer. It was an smaller, old trailer (mid-late 70's?). When we walked up to the trailer, there was a guy sitting there on the trailer. I struck up an apologetic conversation, only to find out it wasn't his - it was his friends. He then ran and got his buddy.
All that was really done was it collapsed/mangled his fender a bit and wrecked the reflector on the back of the fender. All you needed to do was give the fender a good tug and it would be back in its original condition.
I apologized up and down and he wasn't really that bad about it. He said that a guy took the back of his trailer off last year and drove off without saying anything - so when he came back and saw this he was already on the phone with his wife to get a hold of the cops and was glad to see I wasn't like that last pr*ck. I know that if someone hit my trailer, I would want someone to stick around and man-up to their mistake.
After about 10 minutes of chewing over what to do, I offered to write him a check for $150 and call it a day. My guess is that he'll just take the $150 and pocket it; I would -- the damage to his fender would cost him $50 at the most. He thought that was a fair deal, we wrote the check, took photos with is camera phone (dammit I didn't have my camera), shook hands and went on our way.
I documented as much as I could. The only other step I could have taken is to call the cops in... and I'm sure there will be a lot of debate over whether that was a stupid move NOT to call them in... but I could tell that these three guys (fisherman) had been out fishing and drinking since 5 AM and the last thing they wanted to deal with was a cop.
In the process he told me he paid $500 for his boat and $500 for his trailer... so I just paid for 30% of his trailer --- or a summer's worth of gas for his fishing boat...
So, call me stupid or whatever for not calling the cops in - but I felt that was overkill for the situation and I'm planning that there are still good people in this world.
Well, he came running back to the courtesy dock and said that he needed my help.... he his someones trailer.
Of course at that moment about 300 swear words went through my head. I envisioned him smacking into on of those Ranger Boat trailers which appear to be 90% plastic and 10% steel.
I don't want to use the term luckily here, but what he did was cut the corner too sharp and the left fender of my trailer smashed against the right fender of his trailer. It was an smaller, old trailer (mid-late 70's?). When we walked up to the trailer, there was a guy sitting there on the trailer. I struck up an apologetic conversation, only to find out it wasn't his - it was his friends. He then ran and got his buddy.
All that was really done was it collapsed/mangled his fender a bit and wrecked the reflector on the back of the fender. All you needed to do was give the fender a good tug and it would be back in its original condition.
I apologized up and down and he wasn't really that bad about it. He said that a guy took the back of his trailer off last year and drove off without saying anything - so when he came back and saw this he was already on the phone with his wife to get a hold of the cops and was glad to see I wasn't like that last pr*ck. I know that if someone hit my trailer, I would want someone to stick around and man-up to their mistake.
After about 10 minutes of chewing over what to do, I offered to write him a check for $150 and call it a day. My guess is that he'll just take the $150 and pocket it; I would -- the damage to his fender would cost him $50 at the most. He thought that was a fair deal, we wrote the check, took photos with is camera phone (dammit I didn't have my camera), shook hands and went on our way.
I documented as much as I could. The only other step I could have taken is to call the cops in... and I'm sure there will be a lot of debate over whether that was a stupid move NOT to call them in... but I could tell that these three guys (fisherman) had been out fishing and drinking since 5 AM and the last thing they wanted to deal with was a cop.
In the process he told me he paid $500 for his boat and $500 for his trailer... so I just paid for 30% of his trailer --- or a summer's worth of gas for his fishing boat...
So, call me stupid or whatever for not calling the cops in - but I felt that was overkill for the situation and I'm planning that there are still good people in this world.
