Murphy’s Law…we’ve all heard of it. Murphy gets cursed when the thing you least expect to happen, happens! You’ve made sure to check all the little things off your list, and end up forgetting something major. You just bought the milk and it doesn’t expire for 3 more weeks, and yet it curdles as soon as it hits your coffee…when you’re running late for work. Planning to go camping in a tent? You can be sure that Ol’ Murphy will send the thunderstorms.

Murphy decided to pay us a visit a week ago. We got very lucky to be given an amount of money to spend on something for ourselves, instead of the kids, house or bills, so we decided to upgrade the MV Wreckoon to a larger boat.

A few weeks ago, we went up to Ottawa to look at a boat. It was nice, needs some minor work, but other wise, pretty much what we are looking for. AND it came with a trailer! When we left, we were discussing what we thought about the boat itself, and my comment to Bill was that there was something wrong with the trailer. I don’t know trailers well at all, so I wasn’t able to point out exactly what I thought was wrong with it, but I knew there was something “off.”

We came home and talked about it over the weekend and the following week, and decided that we were going to offer the guy a price and see what he says. He didn’t like our price, but we did come to an agreement of $2000 less than he was asking, it was a fair price. We let him know that we would come up again with the other truck in two weekends time, and pick up our new boat and so Bill started the countdown of days!

We should have realized, that Murphy was planning something really epic when we got there and all 4 of the trailer tires were completely flat. Thanks to a nice lady who let us use her compressor, that was corrected pretty quickly. But then….the trailer lights won’t work…Bill and the guy checked all the wires and could not figure out what was wrong, so we decided to take a chance and drive like that since it was the middle of the day. We both looked over the trailer, truck and the hook ups to make sure all was good and we hit the road.

I’ve never seen, let alone driven, a trailer like this. It has surge brakes instead of disk brakes. No big deal, Bill’s driven one before. I noticed when we were hooking up and just before we left the the hitch of the trailer was really strange looking too. Like I said, I don’t know trailers so I didn’t realize something wasn’t right.

The drive from Ottawa, back to Golden Lake is about 2 hours and 15 minutes. All was good and we were cruising along, just heading into Orleans on Hwy 174, hitting just a wee bit of construction. Stop at a red light, then get going again. Go over one small bump in the road, then another….I’m telling you, neither of these bumps would have spilled a full coffee with no lid on! They were nothing! Except they must have been something because the next thing I hear is metal hitting the road. I figured it was the ladder off the swim platform falling off, it’s cracked and we have a replacement, so no big deal. I looked at Bill just as he yelled “Holy F*ck! We lost the trailer!”

Turns out that those two little bumps, coupled with the fact that the trailer hitch was completely worn out, (which we didn’t know until after the fact), caused the boat to tip a wee bit backwards and the hitch UN-COUPLED!!! The chains held for a few seconds, but they straightened out into almost straight lines.

We got so lucky! Bill stayed completely calm, and knew what to do. There was a median to the left, and it’s so deep that if the trailer/boat had gone that way, we’d have been picking it out in pieces. Luckily there was a lane to the right that was blocked off by construction cones. Bill was able to steer the lose trailer into that lane without the boat tipping and in fact, without the truck or trailer even touching one of the construction cones!! I couldn’t believe it. The whole thing was over in seconds! It’s taken me longer to type this paragraph then it did for the whole situation to unfold.

Unfortunately, the only way that Bill could steer the trailer was to let it hit the back of the truck…twice. Again, it was the trailer that hit the truck and not the actual boat. The truck, has some damage, but fortunately, the frame of the truck wasn’t bent and it should be a fairly simple repair.

We had just passed a Canadian Tire, so we hopped in the truck and zipped over there to get new chains and a new bigger size ball. I was super nervous leaving the boat on the side of the road like that, but we had no choice, and it was only for a short time.

Turns out that the bigger ball was too big, and the one that we were using was the correct size…that’s when we figured out that the hitch was super worn out. We attached the new chains, added some ratchet straps to the back of the boat, (securing it to the trailer), put a wee little pin in the lock on the hitch just as an added measure, and got back on the road.

We drove the whole distance at only 70-80km/h with our four ways on and it ended up taking a bit more than 2.5 hours to get back to Golden Lake. The Phoenix arrived safe and sound, but Bill and I lost about 5 years off our lives on that trip, so we decided that the boat would have to stay there until we got a new, safe, secure, proper sized trailer.

Bill and Uncle Dennis went over the boat and made sure things were as they should be, then launched it. We went out for a small tour just to see what it was like, and to see if I got seasick on it (which I didn’t), but the ride was just too short.

Now, we wait….the new trailer should be finished being built in 2-3 weeks and we can go retrieve our boat. Until then, Bill is like a little boy at Christmastime, anxiously waiting to be able to play with his new toy, and I’m praying that Thursday’s events are not an indication of what the rest of our time with The Phoenix is going to be!