FIRE!
Suddenly a car pulled up alongside us, the occupants holding up their fire extinguisher and pointing to the back of the RV (interesting that they had a fire extinguisher in their car)! I knew instantly that we had a problem with the sailboat trailer.
After stopping, we learned that we had been literally dragging the boat and trailer down the highway with the hull of the boat only ½" off the road surface.
We observed that the sailboat trailer had no wheel, no fender, no leaf springs, and the axle was broken. Also, the axle grease was on fire and the axle was melting down into the asphalt. So close to a terrible disaster (an outboard engine full of gas was also on the back of the sailboat).
No Help!
We immediately called our trustworthy insurance company who had emergency road-side service, asking them to send out a flatbed truck for the sailboat & trailer.
We were an hour from the nearest town, but he soon arrived, only to tell us there certainly was no way he could handle a sailboat and that he could not help us, cautioning that if we left it overnight in that area, it would be completely vandalized by dawn.
My wife and I then propped up the trailer with wood blocks that I had luckily kept in the RV basement, dismantled the 8' axle, put it in the RV (down the center isle) and drove to the nearest town.
We finally found a large repair place that had a welder on site. They informed us that they would have to order parts and it would take about 3 days. As I mentioned, we had places to go and deadlines to meet, so that was unacceptable!
I asked to go look in their warehouse and "junk yard" and finally came up with the parts we needed, including the leaf springs. I proceeded to tell the welder where to weld what, and the project was finally completed about 6 hours later.
Rushed, Dangerous!
Now we had a rush against time, as it would be dark shortly. We raced back to where we had left the sailboat, crawled under, and finally got the trailer back together with the repaired axle. It was dark, by now, so we were using flashlights.
The last part was to hook up the electrical on the trailer, but alas, we could not get the wiring to work. However, we started out again, proceeded down the road trying to find a place where we could safely stay for the night.
After only about 2 miles, we came across a rest stop, and thankfully stayed there that night.
In the morning, I was able to fix the wiring, and we were again on our way, after having cancelled one show we would not be able to attend.
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