If you’ve been boating lately, you’ve probably had to contend with the frustration of launching your craft. You need to wait for the boat ramp to clear, then you need to gently back your trailer into the water without jack-knifing along the way. Finally, you need to float the boat and pull it off the trailer, usually getting yourself mighty wet in the process. But what if you could skip half of these steps and launch your boat in one smooth, fluid motion?
That’s precisely what Anthony Jones does. He’s got a skiff that he uses for fishing, and it’s small enough to just hang out the back of his truck. This means he doesn’t need a trailer, which is a great way to save money on insurance and registration where required. But it’s also a great way to save frustration on the boat ramp, because it makes backing up much easier. But how does he actually get the boat out of the bed and into the water?
Anthony demonstrates his method on Instagram with great skill and hilarity. His method involves lining up at the boat ramp with the boat hanging out the back. Then, he simply mats the pedal in reverse. He then slams on the brakes, the truck stops, and the boat keeps going. It soars into the water in one graceful move.
Even better, the boat is attached to the truck with a long, loose rope, so it doesn’t go too far. Anthony simply drives forward a little to tug the boat into the right position for boarding.
In some ways, this is a very admirable technique. It requires just one person and no trailer, making it perfect for an easy day of solo fishing. It also gets you off the ramp fast, so you’re not holding up other boaters who are fuming behind the wheel as they seek their day of water-based leisure.
But should you actually do this? I’d have to say, almost certainly not (and it’s not clear how serious Anthony is). Real talk, if you’re at a private ramp or there’s absolutely nobody around, you can probably get away with this. But at a public spot, it’s far less advisable. Boat ramps are usually crowded places, with other adults, kids, and often animals running around, too. Few people are expecting a truck to randomly accelerate backwards at high speed towards the ramp. If you’re attempting this maneuver solo, you’ve almost certainly got limited vision, too, adding to the danger.
Even with spotters, it’s still risky. You’re essentially flinging a very large projectile out the back of your truck, and you’re hoping it goes where you want it to. Plus, it’s easy to get into trouble when reversing at high speed. You could flick the wheel and hit a post or even roll in extreme cases. Or, you could miss your braking point and end up with your whole truck in the drink.
There’s also the question of how you get the boat back in the truck. I could conceive of maybe using a come-along or winch installed on the truck to do so, but you still need to be able to raise the front of the boat to clear the bed.
Ultimately, I’d say you should save the boat-flinging antics for your friend’s private lake. There you can have all the laughs you want without endangering others.
Just remember, if everyone’s filming you at the boat ramp, you’ve either done something very stupid, or you’re seconds away from doing so. Happy boatery.
Image credits: adubjones via Instagram screenshot
That’s about a nine on the macho scale there, Rube.
Maybe dial it back to a two or three and accomplish the same thing less dangerously?
He gets out of his truck and walks to his boat like he wants to fight it.
You’re going fishing bro, calm down.
Tell me you road rage without telling me you road rage.
I don’t think that’s a lite skiff there. I think that’s technically a “douche canoe”.
Well played sir. And may I wish you the best of luck on all your future auto insurance claims. Oh, and just in case you missed it, The Internet Is Forever. 🙂
But I’m sure the clicks are worth it.
I love being able to simply pick up my kayak, carry it to the water and go. No trailer, no boat registration, no marina. I could probably yeet a kayak like this but why bother?
Idaho requires an invasive species sticker on all hard sided craft, including my $100 Walmart plastic kayak but not a $100 Walmart inflatable kayak. It’s really annoying and I don’t make a rule of actually buying the sticker.
Oregon doesn’t require an invasive species permit below 14′ so our 10′ kayaks skate by.
Oregon doesn’t require an invasive species sticker on craft under 14′, but they have giant signs “ALL WATERCRAFT MUST STOP AND BE INSPECTED FOR INVASIVE SPECIES” at the border? That’s really weird actually.
“Welcome to Oregon, yes that really is our legislature.” California has had a bad influence on the state, OTOH there are no known zebra mussels in Oregon
To be fair, there were also no known zebra mussels in Idaho until there were this summer. I understand the importance of taking care of invasive species, but I also know that kayaks aren’t transporting mussels.
Maybe. Then again some dude tried to smuggle SSDs into the country by just taping a ton of them to his body. Apparently he forgot that we scan people…… and have eyes.
I think the sticker should more appropriately be put on the human.
More seriously, that’s something I was not aware even existed anywhere.
Slow news day?
When I was using my grad school advisor’s aluminum canoe for fieldwork. I would pull the back end off my truck top until the tip was in the ground then go under and walk it up until is was free-standing on the tip and then let it crash into the water. I did not line that professor or his canoe.
Buy did you like him or his canoe?
???????????? did you like him or his canon?
He was a racist sexist homophobic drunken monster that slept with his students and bullied me. Busting up his canoe was petty revenge.
I was just being a pedantic jerk trying humor over a tiny typo you made.
“I did not line that professor or his canoe.”
Apologies. But yeah, fuck the prof and his canoe! 🙂
For the clicks, yo.
Yeeting a boat like this is no big deal when the hull is polyethylene. You’re not going to hurt the boat or the truck.
But it’s also completely unnecessary. He could’ve done the same thing at half the speed, too. With hard braking, anything faster than a brisk walk would’ve slid that boat right out.
This thing is barely heavier than a kayak. It’s easily launched the same way it was put into the bed of the truck: lifted and pushed into place by one person.
This is a fun little piece of clickbait, nothing more.
You can’t monetize* pushing a kayak into the pond.
*I hate this word with every fiber of my being.
I did something similar when I was in college. We had to move a bunch of random building materials, mostly 2x4s of various lengths, a few blocks. We lined the back of my Explorer Sport with plywood on the bottom and sides. We then put another plywood sheet on the floor with a little grease between. We loaded up and I pulled to the drop site which was next to a street going uphill. I gunned it and the top plywood sheet slid out with most of the boards on top and plopped onto the ground.
It worked! I wouldn’t recommend it, but it worked.
I tried to fling grass clippings out of a pickup by doing donuts in a field. It didn’t work at all, but I’d still recommend it just for fun. (As long as you have permission, of course…)
And this is why his friends never ask him to drop them off at the airport.
I’ve rarely found surfaces slipperier than a wet, algae-covered boat launch, so all I can imagine is an unintentional reprise of Clarkson’s Toy-boat-a, with perhaps sub-optimal results.
Offset wheels on a truck : 100% douchebag
I want to see him do that just after someone else has pulled their boat out of the water and the ramp is wet. Double launch.
If you think that’s cool, you should see him launch the boat back into the truck.
You’re picturing the same technique that I am, aren’t you?
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a3/f2/c0/a3f2c07aa543cc45e951c2c7d323ea1f.jpg
I mean, they don’t call it a boat ramp for nothing.
However he does NOT show how the boat now forward facing gets turned 180 degrees for the next launch.
I noticed a few months ago that the boat ramps on a local river all have warning signs that launching your boat this way will have you fined and banned. Having watched folks sink their trucks on boat launches when launching with a trailer, it seems like the method shown in the article only improves the odds of losing a vehicle in a waterway and nothing else.
Wait, legit? What does the sign say?
Unfortunately, it’s been a few months since I read the signs, but it has some pictograms of acceptable and unacceptable methods, including showing launching directly out of the back of a truck with a red circle around it with a red line through the middle. I don’t recall the language written on the sign, but I recall it saying that persons caught in violation would receive a fine of up to $2000 and could be banned from being allowed to use the waterway (in this case, a river upstream of a lake).
Its called working smarter, not harder.
That’s why they call it a boat launch.
That boat isn’t heavy enough to require this kind of shenanigans. Just lift it into the water!
Show-off looking for attention. Very sad.
I dunno, it gave me a laugh and I think that was the point. It seems like something my friend and I would have tried when we were younger. If the technology to easily videotape and upload the shenanigans were available, we probably would have done the same thing.
Nah, we always tried to hide our shenanigans. In those days the cops spent most of their time going after teenage boys doing stupid shit.
Yeah, the squealing tires and yanking the boat back in are just for show. Just do the opposite of how he loads it by himself. But who’s going to click on that?
The last time we moved, I considered a similar maneuver.
It had been 18 years since we’d last packed up everything we owned, and was getting late. Like, 2 in the morning late. It was the last load and was basically a bunch of junk we should have thrown away, but an unexpectedly quick closing date put us in a bind.
It was dark, I was tired, and I didn’t give a rat fart in a high wind about the contents of the box truck, so I gave serious consideration to lining up with the garage, putting it in reverse, gunning it, then slamming on the brakes.
Alas, I didn’t do it, we finished an hour or so later, and went to bed in our new house.
The end.
Toward the end of moving out of my 2nd floor apt in a formerly working-class part of town gone to seed we were tired of carting stuff down the narrow 1950s stairwell. Several pieces of junk furniture subsequently exited through a window, then were tossed approximately to the curb from the porch roof.
I blame a local purveyor of lemonade slushies in which Mezcal mixes really well 😉
Moving sucks, amirite?
It sucked when I was young.
As an older autopian I can say unreservedly that it is a huge shit sandwich.
I believe the phrase is…Yeet!
That was my first thought.
This launching maneuver should be legal, with the requirement that the driver screams “yeet” out the open window when they hit the brakes.
Truly, that man has more trust in his brakes than I ever will, and I drive a Prius.