“Is it left in the mirrors or left on the wheel?”
Paul Burney reported feeling the weight of a thousand suns on his shoulders bright and early, as the newly minted skipper dealt with the pressure of attempting to back his brand new boat in at the Dampier ramp for the first time.
Waking up at 4am in an attempt to try and skip the queue, the anxiety began to set in for Paul as he pulled into the Boat ramp entry point and saw at least 4-5 boats already lined up to launch.
Feeling the immediate impulse to turn around and drive back home in shame as a sense of inadequacy twisted in his stomach, another car pulled in behind him, effectively locking him in and slowly pushing him further towards the ramp, like a young boy at a theme park having an existential crisis slowly walking the steps up to the top of the waterslide.
His hands quivered as he pulled into the rigging area and undid the straps. It took him five goes to screw the bung in. He tried to steady himself and focus on his training, the three YouTube how-to videos he watched the night previous. The nice sounding Queenslander in the video felt a distant memory as he got back in his car to re-enter the queue.
Each boatie ahead of him elegantly pulled forward and reversed their vessel into the water with such ease that it felt like they were synchronized to some smooth nautical mating dance. Each driver looked across to Paul in the queue as they reversed, with a kind of knowing grin that his fate was sealed.
Paul was now the next in line. He quickly fantasized about peeling out, selling the boat at a loss and purchasing some fillets from the Fish truck on the way home and telling his wife that it went so well that he had decided he never needed to fish again. It was no use. He accepted his fate, turned into the far ramp lane and slowly began to reverse.
He kept his foot soft on the accelerator so as to not amplify any over-corrections, turned the wheel towards the side of the mirror he could see the boat poking out of when he needed to and gently guided the boat to a point in which he could detach it from the trailer and get on his way. He had done it.
Onlookers brushed away tears of pride as fellow seafarers gave him firm nods of approval. He smiled back at them, slowly reversed the boat out and set forth on his journey to catch zero fish at dud spots his mate sent him.
Turns out it’s not that hard to reverse a trailer when you’re not a complete spanner.
