Continued from Sailing yet again... Let me say up front here that anyone who says 'she's an old boat on an old trailer so what can you expect' is not aware that we have towed Eun na Mara many miles across the country so were not expecting anything to go wrong this time. But it did.
We were about fifty miles into the boat delivery journey, still en route to Glasgow, and driving up to the highest point of a mountain pass known as the 'Rest and be Thankful' when the unthinkable happened. The boat trailer shed one of its wheels.
I just caught a glimpse of it bouncing down the road in my rearview mirror and thankfully was only driving slowly at the time so was able to pull over to the side without any difficulty. A quick glance at the damage told me we were not going anywhere. All four of the studs fixing the wheel to the hub had sheared completely and the wheel itself had disappeared into a ditch at the side of the road. At the moment this happened there was one car behind us, waiting to overtake, and thankfully the wheel's flight path had missed it - a great relief - but the more important question was what to do next. We were completely stuck, on a main road, with cars and lorries rushing past at speed although fortune had smiled on us a little as it had happened on a fairly straight stretch of road. We immediately switched on our hazard lights then got on the phone to try to find a recovery firm who could pick us up. We knew immediately that this would not be a roadside repair as the wheel bolts had sheered and new ones would need to be sourced then replaced.
One important factor for us was to keep ourselves safe. We were now blocking one of the two lanes so when vehicles approached simultaneously from opposite directions one always had to pause until the way ahead was clear. Simple enough, one might think, but many drivers do not feel they should have to slow down and will try to sneak past by accelerating if they think they can get by despite this putting them head on to the oncoming traffic. Any misjudgement would result in a crash so sitting comfortably in our van was not the safest place for us to wait for the recovery truck to arrive. Instead we stood on the verge, a place from where we could always dive into the ditch if the need arose.
Then again, thinking safety, we also called the police to report what had happened and around thirty minutes later they turned up, blue lights and all. Once they had parked behind us we felt much safer and we shared a good jovial natter with them until the recovery truck arrived half an hour later. This came fully equipped for the job and in minutes they had our trailer loaded on their truck.
Their base was in Dumbarton on the outskirts of Glasgow but rather than follow them in our van we turned around and drove home as we knew the repair would take a while.
Which brings me to the next problem. The garage told us they could not source replacement wheel studs (like headless bolts) of the right size for our trailer. Only when these were fitted would we be able to resume our boat delivery journey. Fortunately from the comfort of our home we eventually managed to source these from a company many miles away in England but we then had to wait for them to be delivered by post. How long this might take on the run up to Christmas was anyone's guess.
Eventually we got an email message telling us the day and the time that our parcel would be delivered which meant we could plan our trip south again. But when the day arrived, nothing. All plans were on hold whilst we waited for the simplest of things, a small parcel containing a few bits of metal. Thankfully our boat buyer was a very understanding man and he was willing to let things stand until the boat arrived at his door and in any event we received seemingly endless weather warnings about rain and strong winds affecting our route so we began to think that perhaps the gods were actually working in our favour when they pulled the wheel off the trailer.
A second email arrived with an new delivery date and the online parcel tracker now showed the package as having arrived in our village, a cause for some optimism. But by mid afternoon this had faded. Fortunately, however, we have real human beings who run our local post office and by late afternoon I get a telephone call saying our package had been located. Having picked this up we drove off immediately so we could present the new wheel studs to the Dumbarton garage first thing the next day, which we did. Sadly however this soon brought us to problem No.2, the absence of wheel nuts, the originals having been lost when the wheel flew off, and strangely our garage couldn't source these either so we had to buy them ourselves from a nearby shop. They were not quite the right type but they would do.
Finally by ten o'clock in the morning we were on the road, a trailer full of boat following closely behind us. We now had some seven hours of motorway driving to negotiate and, our own speed being limited, this put us in the company of an endless line of heavy lorries belching fumes all over us, for hour after hour. It was after dark when we eventually arrived at the Derbyshire home of our new boat owner and carefully reversed the trailer into his drive. At this point we were totally exhausted, miles from home, and feeling unwell after hours of exposure to motorway madness. Living where we do we are immune from this. Our roads are bendy single carriageway things, the nearest motorway being around one hundred miles distant. We had agreed to do all this to make ourselves boat-free, which was always the plan, but do not ever again want to go through the process that got us here.
After staying the night near Leeds, my brother having offered to feed us and put us up for the night, the journey back home, minus boat and trailer, was uneventful although again tiring as we met strong winds, heavy rain showers and yet more lorries. But at least all our wheels stayed on!
No comments:
Post a Comment