Okay, so my kids had had a jones for a Sea-Doo for a few years. To rewind to the very beginning of the story, in 2015 we met a very nice chap named Les at Flathead Lake in Montana. He had a Stilleto – a 27′ cat that’s kind of at the big end for a beachcat and the small end for a cruiser, as it actually has berths in the hulls. He has a large family, so a boat like that makes sense. Anyway, we had the TriFoiler with us, and though the sailing wasn’t good that trip (not enough wind), we did get to kindle a friendship. On a subsequent trip down for the August 2017 eclipse we ran into him again; he happened to have an old Sea-Doo along and let the girls blast around on it, and somewhat to my chagrin they got hooked on the (in sailors’ eyes – but we’ll circle back to that later) obnoxious thing and Becky began sniffing around to see if there was something appropriate (meaning cheap) to be found, but nothing turned up anywhere close to home that summer. Then when we were camping+sailing the Fresno Reservoir (also Montana) in 2019 a couple of the locals let them take theirs (new shiny expensive Sparks) out and tear around. So when we got home Becky renewed her search for something affordable, couldn’t find anything reasonable north of the border (e.g. a ’96 on a trailer for $3500 in Grande Prairie is not reasonable) and on a Monday found a pair of 1995s – with trailer – down near Butte, Montana (about an eight hour drive) and negotiated the lot for $1200 USD – a smokin’ deal. (They were asking $1600, but Becky ground ’em down. That’s my girl.) On Tuesday morning, then, she, Sarah, and I shot down for what we thought would be a simple day trip. By the time we found the sellers’ cottage, took one for a spin, loaded it back up, hitched it to the car, and squared the paperwork, it was pushing sunset, so on the way home we caught a few hours sleep at a rest stop north of Helena and hit the road again first thing Wednesday. Made the border about 11:30am, and that’s when things turned weird.
Honestly, I should have caught the mistake, though I don’t think it would have changed anything – I had a fat packet of papers, and some of the stuff in there (like the Sea-Doo titles – we’d call them “registrations” in Canada, but we don’t need them for boats) was really just clutter. The discovery was that we didn’t have the title for the trailer – though the trailer was listed on the bill of sale – and that this was obviously a consequence of the manufacturer’s VIN sticker being lost years prior. The couple we bought it from had evidently bought it from someone else in Montana and must have just hauled it to their place on the lake and kept it there ever since, never bothering with registering it. Without the title – or even a serial number (which the three of us and a parade of Canada Customs officers searched in vain for any trace of on the trailer) – customs stopped us dead in our tracks. Lacking a bill of sale with a serial number to tie it to a matching number on the trailer, they wouldn’t let it in. No amount of begging, wheedling, negotiation, or cajoling made any difference. And I wasn’t being unreasonable – I was trying to get them to give us a temporary dispensation that might, for example, allow us ten days to get it home and get a registry-assigned VIN (such as one gets for a homemade trailer). No dice. Customs wouldn’t go any further than saying that if Transport Canada allowed it in Customs would go along. To that end, they gave me the 800 number for Transport Canada and pointed me at a pay phone across the room. The number was no longer in service. Another officer gave me another number, and it was NFG too. On the third try, we got through and a woman at Transport Canada said that Customs owned the decision. With a few more phone calls, we went back and forth between Transport and Customs again, each time with a different woman at Transport Canada, trying to find an angle that would work, such as a temporary importation or importing on the promise that it would be either registered or destroyed within 30 days or something. Nobody would say yes. I was beginning to consider worst-case scenarios, like hauling it back to Shelby (about a half hour south, four hours from home) for storage – at whatever ungodly price – or maybe out to a stateside friend’s place yet another couple of hours away to park it until we could sort this Charlie Foxtrot out with the addition of a lot of extra time and travel.
We were getting nowhere until – eventually – a guy at Transport Canada suggested that if I were to line up a flatbed, the whole mess could be trucked into the country without any trouble – if the axle were removed from the trailer. “No axle, no conveyance. It would be a cradle, not a trailer, and none of our business. Just saying.”
So we turned around and headed for a storage yard tied to a bar and convenience store just on the US side, without a clear plan. I explained the problem to the guys there, and was musing about how I really needed to find some place with a hoist, when they said they had a forklift and they could help out for a few bucks. From their front counter I called my old friend Austin, who lives just north of the border – about 15 minutes away – and who I knew had a little utility trailer. This was all just coming together on the fly – I don’t carry a tracking device (“cellphone” to you) and he and I usually communicate by email – so I needed their phone and an Alberta phone book (remember those?). He answered – from Portland, where he was visiting family – but said his girlfriend Pam was at the house and he’d give her a heads-up that we were coming to borrow the trailer.
Back over now to the Canadian side and up to Austin’s place, where we found his 10′ utility trailer had a flat that took about an hour to pump up with a little 12V “top up” compressor. Drove back down, forked both Sea-Doos onto pallets and yanked the axle off the trailer, turning it, as far as the regulations are concerned, from a trailer into a collection of trailer parts. Tossed the “cradle” (without the axle and wheels) onto Austin’s trailer and hauled it north.
Things got interesting with the Canada Customs guys once they realized what I was doing. I explained that Transport Canada had told me that without the axle it was no longer a trailer, and after confirming that I did not have the axle or wheels in Austin’s trailer with it, and admonishing me that it would never be registerable in Canada, the officer I’d spoken with previously carefully instructed another officer in filling out the importation form, declaring it as “trailer parts” and explicitly noting the absence of axle and wheels. When I saw that they were treating the “cradle” and Sea-Doos as three separate importations, I asked why they didn’t just do a single entry with “goods to follow” (because I had a single bill of sale for everything), but he cut me off and said he “[didn’t] want to bother with that stuff”. I realized about an hour later that by papering it that way he was actually doing me a gigantic favour – separate entries guaranteed that any wheels or axles imported in a later shipment couldn’t be seen as the other parts of a complete trailer. A real mitzvah.
So now we had the “cradle” on the Canadian side, dropped it at Austin’s, and headed south again – but thinking about the order in which we had to do the remaining pieces. Remember the puzzle about the guy who has to get a fox, a chicken, and a bag of grain from one side of the river to the other in a boat that will only carry him and one of those three things at a time? This was that. Without a hoist at Austin’s, we had no way to lift the Sea-Doos, so we needed a destination trailer – on wheels – if we were to hope to slide the Sea-Doos from one trailer to the other. So the next trip had to be one Sea-Doo (the smaller of the two) and the rest of the trailer parts, and that’s what made me the most nervous, because that’s the point at which they could call me on this whole stunt. Miraculously, they let me import the Sea-Doo without paying any attention to the spare tires and junk axle (for trailer unknown) riding along. Whether this was at the suggestion of the first officer I’ll never know.
But as were leaving the storage yard on the second trip, the guys there mentioned that they close at 7:00pm, and seeing as how it was already 5:30, we were suddenly on the clock – and the situation wasn’t helped by this being the day that US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) were also screening all cars exiting the US, before we lined up for Canada Customs, adding an unpredictable delay to each northbound crossing. (Why? Beats me. When I asked the first time through, I got snapped at – “None of your business” – and thought it best not to press the matter.)
So while we were driving up to Austin’s with the second load, I briefed my rookie pit crew on who would be doing what once we arrived: They were to get the wheels out of the trailer and on either side of the cradle while I fetched the axle, they’d each spin in the wheel bolts, and once they were finger-tight I’d lift the cradle while they pinned the springs (which I’d left attached to the axle – half as many bolts that way) back on – hopefully without lopping off any fingertips. So with the trailer reassembled Just Enough, I pushed the first Sea-Doo off of Austin’s trailer until the Sea-Doo trailer’s winch could reach and pull it on the rest of the way… all while watching the clock.
Then back south for the last trip, and (amazingly) for the first time all day, no lineup at US Customs, which landed us at the storage yard at 6:55. Five minutes later the second Sea-Doo was on the trailer; I asked Buddy how much, he said fifty bucks, and I broke a cardinal rule by getting cash from their in-store ATM, which only dispensed twenties. I gave him the $60, told him I’d never been happier to round up, thanked them both for their help, and we closed in on the home stretch. By 8:30 we’d winched the second Sea-Doo and tightened all the trailer’s bolts, hit the road and got home around midnight.
By the time we made the last US-Canada trip, the US CBP guys who were checking outbound traffic – and who had seen us five times that day – were razzing us, asking if that was the last drug haul of the day. The Canada Customs officers just seemed to take it all in stride.
In the end, it took 9 extra hours, making our average speed from the border to Austin’s place about 0.5 km/hr. In total, we crossed the US-Canada border ten times.
What a day. What a story.
Postscript: After talking to EZ Loader, I found the very-well-hidden backup VIN sticker, making it registerable after all (without having to apply for an Assigned VIN), once the folks we’d bought it from mailed us a new bill of sale with the VIN added. Plus, it turned out that the trailer was more than 15 years old, so I again dodged the Registrar of Imported Vehicles, which is an extra grift the Canadian gov’t runs that adds an additional cost (more than $300!) to stuff like this.
Post Postscript: About that “sailors hating Sea-Doos” thing. It’s not for lack of good reason – they’re (Sea-Doos, not sailors) completely obnoxious. They make a giant fucking racket, the older two-stroke engines (like ours) stink and leave oil slicks on the water, create really annoying waves, and are generally driven by white trash who blast country music that’s worse than the sound of the engines. On the other hand, the TriFoiler is a really difficult boat to deal with near the shore, in the same way that a rail dragster isn’t much use for a trip to the 7-11 three blocks away. That’s why a lot of TF sailors have added trolling motors and small outboards to their boats. Having watched Riding Giants, the documentary about Laird Hamilton and the big wave surfers who revolutionized the sport, I see how the Sea-Doo could be great for getting in and out of the shallows and low-wind areas, or just for a tow home if I’m out there and the wind dies. So I’m hoping to make the trailer (which is really wide) convertible, able to carry the two Sea-Doos – or one and the TF. Stay tuned.
Nitpicking Bastard 