How many of you have ever had a phone call in the middle of the night saying "can ya help me out? im stuck"....
A few weeks ago on a saturday night, i'm just about to climb into bed for the night, when the phone rings. It's 12:45am.
The voice on the other end says "hello Dave? It's Kerley... I'm somewhere between Port
Gawler & Thompson's Beach & the Droopy is bogged to the diffs, can ya tow me out?"
So i wake up no. 3 son (shane
adelaide) & tell him to get his bum outta bed to come help me, then i ring no. 4 son (Littleborgy) to get him to come out, too.
We load up the ute with shovels, hi lift jack, planks of wood, ropes, and anything else we could think of to pull the heavy POS out... LOL. Meanwhile, Littleborgy is doing the same with his GQ at his place...
We head out together & meet Kerley on the track to Thompson's (he started walking towards
Port Wakefield Rd, so he could direct us to where he was stuck). When we asked him WTF he was doing there at that time of night, the reply was "I'm here trying to help a mate's brother out... He's bogged too... about 1km from where i'm stuck".
Anyway, we proceed to where he's stuck in the black, stinky muddy, rotten seaweed crap & sure enough, he's
well & truly stuck. "How the $%^& are we gonna get it outta there, Pete?" "$%^&ed if i know" comes the reply.
So we dug a hole at the back of the Droopy, dropped the spare tyre in there & used it as a base plate for the hi lift so we could get the planks of wood under the rear
wheels. After that, we used Littleborgy's GQ with a 1/2" thick by 30m long cable to gently pull him out. We were all quite surprised at how easily the GQ pulled it out. Job
well done boys! So we thought...........
4am... "You reckon you can help me pull out the other fella's Patrol?" Asks Pete. "Nope, do it yourself" we joke... We find another track behind the dunes & Pete in the Droopy makes a track up thru the dunes to get on hard ground within 500m of where the Patrol is stuck.
Basically we done the same as we did with the Droopy (hi lift, etc), then we were able to use the PTO winch on the front of the Droopy with the cable & about 300m of 1" thick rope. Very slow process with the PTO winch, but it did the job.
I know some of you will ask "how come you didn't use the winch to pull the Droopy out in the first place?" but you had to be there to know why we couldn't.
So there ya go... That's the sorta thing we do for our mates... I planned to go to the 4WD show that day, but we didn't get home until 7am that morning, so there went that idea.
Cheers.........Dave