Alright I have another one, and this one is great because it was my brother-in-law so I have the back story, I got called in after it was all over to clean up the mess. The guy has almost no boating experience but decides he needs to go out and buy the biggest rig his credit will afford. I offered to teach him how to load and launch it (as a public service so we all don’t get stuck behind him some day) but he declines my offer. Had he taken my offer one of the things I would have told him is – unless you’re certain the boat will start do not take it off the trailer until its running.
So off to the lake his goes for the maiden voyage, puts his wife (my sister) in the boat, backs the new 20’ deck boat in and not only does he not even try to start it while it’s on the trailer he doesn’t even wait to see if it starts before he jumps in the truck and high tails it out of there to park the truck 2 blocks down the road. So there’s my sister in the boat in the lake with the wind blowing her towards a bridge, as she’s turning the key nothing is happening, so what does she do, turns the key harder and harder until it the whole key assembly rips apart. Luckily a passerby tows her back to the dock. Turns out that when they picked the boat up the night before they were sitting in it in the driveway listening to the radio, left it on all night and the battery was stone cold dead. I got there just in time to hear them argue about whose fault that was.
They ended up finding a replacement ignition which I installed right there at the dock (out of the way of the boat ramp of course) and we made it out in the water. Funny thing was – their dead 20’ boat was tied up at the dock right next to another boat full of a wife and daughters that couldn’t get theirs started either. I was helping them also and when the husband showed up, I tried to brief him on the situation and he told me no that wasn’t the problem and basically yelled at me to get off his boat. An hour later when he had his boat running (I was right and he was wrong about what the problem was BTW) I asked him for a jump start and he said no.
All in all that was a pretty interesting day, and looking back pretty funny.