There are certain things in boating that should be simple. Trailer guides, for example. Two plastic tubes that help Skipper Don line up his boat so he doesn’t end up sideways, crooked, or performing interpretive dance at the boat ramp. Easy, right?
Well… not on the Grand River.
The Grand River is beautiful, majestic, and so murky it could hide a small navy. I love it — but it’s the kind of water where you dip a cup in and immediately reconsider your optimism. It’s the same water I almost used to feed my electric toilet before realizing that greenish‑brown mystery soup probably wasn’t the vibe. But I digress.
When you’re trying to put a boat on a trailer in water that looks like caffeinated mud, visibility becomes… theoretical. You back the trailer in, stare at the surface, and realize you can see exactly nothing. Not the trailer. Not the rails. Not even your own dignity.
So you line up the boat, say a prayer, and hope you’re straight. Spoiler: you’re not. You’re half on, half off, listing like a ship in a documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman. And you repeat this ten times, with four people yelling helpful things like “LEFT! NO, YOUR OTHER LEFT!” until eventually the boat is straight enough that you pretend it was intentional.
After watching enough YouTube videos of people effortlessly loading their boats — because they can actually see their trailers — I decided trailer guides were the answer. I bought a pair way back on Black Friday, the kind of impulse purchase you forget about until the box shows up and you think, “Oh right, Skipper Don had a plan.”
I installed them. They’re plastic tubes. They’re… short. Very short. Short enough that on a big boat, they look like antennae on a confused insect. But I figured I’d make do. After all, how tall do they really need to be?
Well, when I launched the boat, only about a foot of the guides were above the water. One foot. Just enough to say, “Hey, I exist,” but not enough to actually guide anything. It was like installing training wheels on a freight train.
Will they work? I hope so. Otherwise, this is going to be yet another one of those “Skipper Don bought something on sale and now has to modify it” adventures.
And of course, once you start down the trailer rabbit hole, you realize there are more things you need to add. Lights. Rollers. Maybe a winch that doesn’t sound like it’s begging for retirement. At some point, you start thinking, “I should’ve just bought a new trailer and had the boat fitted properly.” But no — I wanted to save a buck. And saving a buck always turns into an adventure.
So here I am, with trailer guides that may or may not be tall enough, a river that hides everything except your mistakes, and a boat that seems determined to teach Skipper Don humility one ramp at a time.
But hey — at least it’s never boring.
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