I had a very bad experience at this marina. My son thought this was the public ramp, and put his boat in there. He left his car parked, with the trailer attached, on the street next to the ramp. There are no signs anywhere indicating this is a private area. However, after we returned a few hours later, the trailer was gone. A man named Alan, or Allen, informed my 19 year old son that he had taken the trailer and moved it to a lot down the road. When I came to talk to Allen, he was quite aggressive with me and said it was private and we weren't allowed to park there, so he had taken the trailer and moved it to a lot down the road.
I pointed out that we had no idea that it was private, and that I thought it was inappropriate for him to unhook our boat trailer and move it. He claimed he had the right to do it and said it was in a lot down the road.
I drove to all the nearby lots I could find, not knowing this area at all, and in none of them could I find the trailer. Meanwhile, our boat was still in the water, and we could not get it out. I came back and told him I could not find it, he again gave me very vague directions, in a rude tone, and then proceeded to go out on a boat.
My son then drove to where Alan said the boat trailer was and he also could not find it. At this point I called the New Durham Police department, because Alan had left, we had no idea where the trailer was, and we needed to get the boat out of the water. A good hour had gone by at this point.
The New Durham police officer arrived shortly thereafter, and was kind and professional. He said he had found our trailer, and knew where it was. I asked why it was ok for Alan to move our trailer from our vehicle and he said "he is running a business here". I said I understood that, but we had no idea it was private property and that there were no signs anywhere indicating it was a place we couldn't park. He said they didn't need to have signs, and that maybe there should be signs to tell you you can in fact use it, and if there arent' you shouldn't. This sort of does not sound like my understanding of how the world typically works.
The officer was kind enough to drive to where the trailer was, and we followed, so we eventually got it back. The officer said that Alan can indeed unhook our trailer and move it by law.
But this whole situation could have been avoided if Alan (or Allen) had made some different choices. He could have done any of the following things. He could have waited until we came back and simply told us that this was private, and we would have apologized and left. He could have signs up indicating that you can't park here or your trailer will be towed an we wouldn't have parked here. He could have had us ticketed, which isn't a nice thing to do, but would have been totally fair.
Instead, he chose to remove the trailer from our car and take it and park it somewhere we couldn't easily find it, given we had never been there before. It struck me as extremely petty and passive aggressive, and as we are visitors from out of town, who clearly had no idea what was going on here, it seemed really unnecessary.
We are happy to follow the rules as we understand them. We made a mistake, which was not at all obvious to us given the lack of signage. And we were treated with rudeness. Indeed, I thought the trailer had been stolen. If I had come back and he was taking it, there could have easily been a confrontation that might have ended badly.
Alan's actions were unnecessarily provocative, passive-aggressive, and rude. He could have just had a conversation, instead he chose this path. I hope in the future, he can make different choices. Effectively stealing a boat trailer from the back of a car and moving it to another location is really not ok. read more
