SILLY REVERSING FAIL
HOW I BROKE
MY VAN
WORDS: MAX TAYLOR
REVERSING A CARAVAN? USE A SPOTTER.
We’ve spoken a lot in this magazine in recent
months about the need to be careful when
reversing the caravan. Use a spotter. Use
hand-held UHF radios. Develop hand signals.
All good advice.
But what happens when, after a long trip,
you fail to heed your own advice? Accidents.
That’s what.
We’d been on a three-day coastal jaunt with
our wind-up camper, the kind with over-centre
catches that secure the roof when it’s in the
‘closed’ position. Returning home involved a
long, tiring drive, with kids in the back seat
who were clearly not in a travelling mood.
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By the time we arrived, we were all ready
to flop into bed. Instead, we had to unpack,
and I had to reverse the van through narrow
gates into our backyard – it’s akin to threading
a needle but I’ve done it many times before
without incident.
Ordinarily, my wife would be my spotter,
keeping her eye on the 100x100mm cypress
pine gateposts; however, for reasons I still
don’t understand, I decided to leave her
wrangling the kids while I wrangled the van.
With my head throbbing with fatigue, I
backed the van slowly through the gates. In
my side mirror, I could see the offside of the
van was a little closer to a gatepost than