You know what P's me off?

L

Lazy Daze

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Apr 21, 2009
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The flagrant mis-use of "courtesy docks"! They are there as a "courtesy" for all boaters, correct? Not to tie your boat up to for 20 minutes - sometimes an hour or more.

At one of the lakes I frequent, there is one dock coming out from shore for a 3-lane ramp. The dock can hold one decent sized boat on each side, and still allow someone to come along the end of the dock (or back into it). The dock is about 6 feet wide and maybe 25' long.

The other day, I was coming back to the dock and there was a boat tied on one side - with NO ONE in it. But, they were tied decently far enough back from the end. The other side had a lady in it, but the boat was tied so far up that the bow of her boat was protruding past the front edge of the dock. I only wanted to "jump off" as my dad was behind the wheel and he would put it back on the trailer. I kindly asked her if she could move her boat back (it was all of about 15' long) so we could come along the front of the dock w/o hitting her boat. Honestly, I did say it kindly!:smt001 Do you know what her response was? "Well, why don't you just be careful and then I won't have to worry about it." :smt013 Can you believe that? The nerve! It's her boat that's in the way and I have to be the one to be extra careful! After my dad angled in ever so gracefully, I thanked her for helping to make things easier for us.

Okay, vent is over. Thanks for reading - hopefully I didn't bore you half way through... :smt001
 
Its why I switched to dry dock today. The morons at the ramp made boating less enjoyable for me...now I can just show up and be on the water in 5 minutes, no more waiting for or dealing with people with no manners.
 
LOL. There a lot of people need a dock etiqutte lesson. 2 summers ago, I need to put my boat to the dock so I can put on trailer, some nice a-hole had his boat tied up right in front of the dock instead of the end, (our dock are abt 50ft long), I wrote him a nice letter saying his **** for brain need to learn dock etiqutte and left on his steering wheel..
 
sfergson727 said:
Sounds legit. I found something that P's me off too. I was anchored in 3 feet of water, with 100 feet of anchor rode out in front, and my stern anchor out about 25 feet off the stern. We were perhaps 50 feet from the beach. As I am snorkeling, around the stern and the kids are playing in the surf, some A-hole in a skidoo jet boat comes screaming in between my boat and the beach. If I had been packing this evening, I would have jammed the barrel up his rear and squeezed the trigger until it went click.

Why are there so many ignorant A-holes on our waterways recently????? Did they start a boat clunkers for cash last month and didn't tell us?
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You need a Webster line. Float 100 feet of polypropylene line from the boat where it is secured loosely to a cleat. It will slow down those who race too closely to your anchored boat.

Best regards,
Frank
 
I was anchored in 3 feet of water, with 100 feet of anchor rode out in front, and my stern anchor out about 25 feet off the stern.
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Why would you have a 100' out when you are in 3 feet of water?
 
Oh, and if dealing with these "uninformed" (feel free to substitute other words for uninformed:wink:) people around the dock weren't enough, 30 feet away is a DCNR officer... sitting in a folding chair with an umbrella over him. Made no attempt to get up. Makes one wonder what's actually in his job description, 'ya know?

I like the floating line idea:thumbsup:

Here's one that turned out in my favor:smt001

Out in front of our cabins in Maine, we use off-shore hauls for some of our small boats - basically a clothesline set-up between shore and an anchor so that you can land on shore, but then pull the boat back out to deep water.

Anyways, we had a couple of guys zipping by in a 70mph bass boat and kept coming closer and closer to going over our lines. We tried to wave them off, but they just ignored us. We do use sinking lines, but near the anchor float they will still be somewhat close to the surface. Even so, this is all within about 50' or 60' from the shore and there are other boats moored in this area, too. Seems like they were having fun gong through a "slalom course". We also tried to warn them that there was a large rock pile that, at this particular tide, was only about 10" or 12" under the surface. Sure enough... BANG!!!! I saw the whole thing! Their 250HP Black Max kicked straight up in the air - I didn't know a outboard could "tilt" up that high! They stopped, looked at the lower unit, looked over to me, looked at their unit again. They puttered away at about 1 mph. I simply stood on my dock and watched. I made no attempt to help. Gotta love karma:grin:
 
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you are right. if they do not know where they are going,,,,then they should stay on shore or home. hurt the transom bouncing that black max/
 
K-9 said:
you are right. if they do not know where they are going,,,,then they should stay on shore or home. hurt the transom bouncing that black max/
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I don't know. I don't see how it could not have. The motor kicked up just about VERTICAL! I could see them as they puttered away for about a mile, until they went around a bend. It was making some funny noises. Never saw them before that day, haven't seen them since.
 
Depends on the rules. Most of the courtesy docks in our area are there for people to tie up to while they have dinner, go shopping for awhile or wait for a slip to open up.
 
sbw1 said:
Depends on the rules. Most of the courtesy docks in our area are there for people to tie up to while they have dinner, go shopping for awhile or wait for a slip to open up.
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There's a BIG brown sign that says "Less than 5 minutes". Of course, that would entail a person actually taking the time to read. Plus, I think it's just common sense - although I guess I'm making another assumption there, too.

There's one, small dock for a 3-lane ramp. Many times there are 15+ boats tooling around waiting to drop someone off at the dock to go get their truck.
 
I had an incident at the dock this past weekend. Same thing everyone tied up to the dock loading supplies (yeah forget the lane before the ramp specifically for this purpose). I backed my truck in to load my jet boat and warned the folks behind me that I was loading my boat and they may want to move.

They looked at me, smarted off with some "not so nice words" and I just smiled. I warned them!:huh:

I got on my boat and brought it around to the ramp and had to very carefully maneuver around them. Jet boats don't maneuver very well at idle. As I entered my trailer, they were all laughing at me because of the hard time I had getting around them. I reached over and hit the tilt switch so the end of the nozzle was out of the water.

You know, it’s amazing how much water comes out of an Evinrude 250 that has a jet pump bolted to it! :wow:

I smiled all the way up the ramp as they were looking for towels to try and dry off.....:smt089
 
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AKBASSKING said:
I had an incident at the dock this past weekend. Same thing everyone tied up to the dock loading supplies (yeah forget the lane before the ramp specifically for this purpose). I backed my truck in to load my jet boat and warned the folks behind me that I was loading my boat and they may want to move.

They looked at me, smarted off with some "not so nice words" and I just smiled. I warned them!:huh:

I got on my boat and brought it around to the ramp and had to very carefully maneuver around them. Jet boats don't maneuver very well at idle. As I entered my trailer, they were all laughing at me because of the hard time I had getting around them. I reached over and hit the tilt switch so the end of the nozzle was out of the water.

You know, it’s amazing how much water comes out of an Evinrude 250 that has a jet pump bolted to it! :wow:

I smiled all the way up the ramp as they were looking for towels to try and dry off.....:smt089
Click to expand...

:grin::grin::grin::thumbsup: Thanks, I needed that!
 
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