This happened quite a few years a go now (16 or 17)
A lot of boats were getting ready near the top of the slipway at Herne Bay & waiting for the tide to come in to the bottom of the slip. Then with about half hour to go someone pulled up with a large speed boat with 2 very large engines, being pulled behind a new VW crew cab thingy. As soon as they arrived they started to rant & shout at everyone, saying everyone was in their way & if they weren’t going to launch they should move. No one could believe their attitude but they moved out of the way so these two jokers could drive down the slip onto the beach. All was going well until they tried to reverse the boat into the sea, at this point their back wheels started spinning and digging nice deep holes. They didn’t take the trailer off the truck they just kept spinning the wheels more & more, digging deeper holes.
Everyone they had upset earlier when they arrived were very sympathetic, they gave them a nice big cheer & a round of applause. Within 10mins the sea had reached their back wheels, this was where some people started to sorry for them and went down to try & help. Within 2mins there were about 30 people trying to push the truck out, but with no luck & within another 10mins the water was at the top of their wheels & they were going nowhere.
At this point everyone else started to launch their own boats, & the couple run off to phone for a recovery vehicle. By time this arrived (large enough to tow a lorry) you could only see about 2 inches of the roof sticking out of the water, the recovery driver said “well here is the cable I’m not getting wet” neither of these 2 could swim so they didn’t want to pull the cable to the truck let alone try to connect it to something solid. I took the cable out to the truck and after feeling my way round the bottom, decided the most solid thing to attach it to was the towbar. The funniest thing to see was when it was when they had pulled it clear of he water to the top of the slipway, one of these two went and opened the door. Gallons of water came rushing out sweeping him off his feet, and sliding back down the slip towards the sea (good job there ware a few of us to stop him or else he would have to learn to swim very quickly)
To give you some insight it to what type of people they were, they couldn’t swim, they were going out in a very fast speedboat & they didn’t have any lifejackets, flair’s or a radio. Oh well perhaps it was a good job they didn’t actually go out on the boat.
__________________
|