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The Trip A Stranger Saved

Trip Report 
3K views 21 replies 18 participants last post by  Greg Price 
#1 ·
Headed out to the coast Thursday night with 2 buddies, had plans to fish Friday thru Sunday. That all came into question about 2 hours into the trip around 11pm on Thursday night. I won't get into the details (OK, I will just a bit), but as we were heading north past poulsbo we had a trailer incident, a very important piece of the trailer failed.... While the details aren't that important, I will say what happened was basically a miracle nobody got hurt or anything got damaged, especially considering the trailer with raft on top at one point was flying thru the air roughly 4' off the ground at about 45 mph. Anyway, we pulled over and ran across the highway (yes the trailer crossed the oncoming lane of traffic completely unattached from the truck) to check for damage, which to our surprise was none, except for the tongue which had failed entirely. Still salvageable, but not great. Counting our blessings nobody was hurt and the raft was all in one piece (but mostly that nobody was hurt), we started thinking next steps. That's when a stranger pulled over to make sure we were all OK (we were). He introduced himself and we chatted about our predicament. His name: Wayne. Our trailer was in obvious need of some repairs and it wasn't able to safely make the rest of the trip. Wayne offered to let us borrow his trailer for the weekend. A little bit apprehensive at first, because it was late on a weeknight and we didn't want to be a burden, but he offered his trailer a few times, so we eventually gave in and said we'd meet him at his house after heading to the gas station to see if we could shore up the trailer situation on our own. We couldn't shore things up on our own, so off to our new friend Waynes house we went to borrow his trailer. Got there about 1AM on Friday morning. Pouring rain. Sure as shit, he had a perfectly sized trailer - full of some beautiful montana pine, but still, minor obstacle. We chatted for a bit, he owns a wood shop and is a hell of a woodworker. He fly fishes. He hunts. He's a dude, and a great guy that was fun to talk with. He had some gorgeous slabs laying around. A bit weird getting all excited about his wood projects at 1AM on a Thursday night in the pouring rain, but it was legit cool stuff he was showing us. Anyway, we eventually unloaded the massive chunks of montana pine he had in his trailer and tossed the raft into the trailer, shot the shit for a while longer, tried to pay him (he refused), thanked him (many times over) and were on our way. He told us to have fun and please drop the trailer off Sunday on our way home, or if we needed it for a week or longer to let him know but that it would be fine if we needed it for an extended period to get home safely. Wayne had saved our trip. What a dude.

We arrived at our place on the river around 3:30AM, with Wayne's trailer and our raft strapped in, unpacked and slept for and hour before getting up to fish. Fished for three days, had a blast, and on Sunday after fishing stopped by forks outfitters to grab some parts (along with a nice bottle of thank you whiskey for Wayne) and headed back to our new friends house to swap trailers and make the repairs needed to ensure a safe drive home. Our repairs didn't go quite as planned and once again our new friend Wayne stepped right in and saved the day again by offering up his torch and a few other tools. Having the tools we needed and repaired our trailer, we were ready to make our way back home.

We said our thank yous again. Before we left I told him how grateful I was (for the 6000th time) and he said something that really resonated with me. He said, a lot of people had helped him along the way in his life, people he didn't know, and that the impact they made was huge. He said, knowing how big of an impact those people that had helped him had made on his life, he figured he could help us and impact our life. Maybe he could make that kind of same impact on someone else.

Wayne could have kept driving by us at 11pm on a weeknight, but instead he stopped, went out of his way and offered to help a few strangers. He stayed up past 1:30AM on a weeknight in the pouring rain to help us. Wayne is a Rockstar and a kick ass human being.

The world needs more people like Wayne.

PS if you're looking for some awesome local slabs of wood or wood guitar blanks let me know and I'll share his companies website. He gets some nice wood from Montana too.

PPS yes, the safety chains were on....
 
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#15 ·
Great question.

Two things went wrong:
A spring in the latching mechanism on the tongue (somehow) came out. Not sure if it rusted out or what happened there, but the net result was that with the latching mechanism closed (and even a lock to lock down) the trailer could be lifted right off the hitch. The test I'll run every trip from here on forward is to give a quick pull up after everything is latched to make sure it doesn't pull up. Never going to use this trailer again, but lesson learned.

The other issue was the chains were crap. They didn't have clips/carabiners on the end, just hooks and the gap on the hook was way too wide. The hooks were kind of an angle shaped hook instead of a circle hook (that would be much harder to get off involuntarily). I've had one of the chains come off before in transit just from bumps along the way - should have done something about it then - stupid on my part. Clips or heavy duty carabiners to attach the chain to the frame solve this problem.
 
#19 ·
It's fortunate there wasn't anyone hurt. I can't be sure of the coupling type, but it sounds like the common one that has a lever mechanism with a spring-loaded hook to keep it in place on the ball.

Was there a pin or bolt through the coupling to lock it closed?
The spring rusted out or came out some how. There's two springs in the common type of locking mechanisms, one on top of the pin/bolt, and one at the bottom of the pin/bolt just above the lock nut. Bottom one was there still, top one...not so much.
 
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