An unfortunate turn of events for a prospective boat buyer slows traffic in North County
Michael McCormic, Jr.
For ClarkCountyToday.com
BATTLE GROUND — It is not every day that drivers encounter another vehicle on their afternoon commute that, by all accounts, does not belong on the road. However, such was the case on Tuesday afternoon, when a beached ski boat occupying the right lane of State Route 503 north of Main St. in Battle Ground slowed traffic to a crawl.
The watercraft, resting on its keel, appeared to have fallen off its trailer at the intersection of SR 503 and Main Street. Jack Maynor, who had been behind the wheel of the truck to which the boat had been previously hitched, explained that, although he and his party had taken all the standard precautions, the 20-foot Seaswirl boat had simply fallen victim to unfortunate circumstances.
“The strap broke and the chain released, and I thought the brakes jumped or something,” Maynor recalls. “We looked back and we didn’t have a boat.”
A frayed and broken blue winch strap, still attached to the bow of the craft, tells the same story; when the truck and trailer left the intersection, the boat seemed to have a different plan. Maynor, a resident of Battle Ground, subsequently parked the truck and trailer and returned to the scene of the accident with Battle Ground Police close behind.
Although Maynor was the driver of the truck that had been towing it, the ill-fated watercraft itself belonged to his cousin. Maynor had planned to purchase the boat from the owner upon arriving at their destination.
“We had taken the boat up to Yale to test it out. I was going to buy it,” he says.
With police on the scene and the lane blocked off from oncoming traffic, Maynor and his party quickly put a plan together to salvage the boat from the road and assess any damage.
As Maynor explains it, “Right now, we’re just not sure how much damage we have. They’re going to try to get it on a flatbed, take it over to maybe Ridgefield, put it in the water again, and then we’ll try and put it back on our trailer. We’ll see.”
The yet-to-be-determined cost of the damage to the boat is certainly unfortunate for both Maynor and the craft’s owner, but the silver lining in this unfortunate mishap is two fold, in that the boat is insured, and nobody was injured.
The owner of the boat and Battle Ground Police both declined to comment on the situation.
