Towing a Boat

Biggest tip when towing is to develop a strong belief in road karma.

If you are travelling slowly because of gradient or conditions, let the queue behind you pass at regular intervals. Having a clear road behind you because you have let the tail gaiting pillok pass leads to a much more relaxing drive if nothing else.

When towing my boat I am rarely the cause of jams cause my little van tows really well, but if you do the trailer in the way slowing everyone down thing then you are just storing up trouble for yourself. slow caravan drivers, tractor drivers and sunday drivers in flat caps with 2 door hatch backs all have C/B radios and communicate to put someone slow in your way the next time you are in a hurry.

Oh- and when lining up at the lights against the local boy racers in rover 25's with MG stickers on. Do try and resist the temptation!!! It is not big or clever!

(Not sure I'll ever get the hang of that last one though.)

I towed my old 600 to Edinburgh the week i past my test, and learned a few things along the way, most of which have been mentioned already.

Probably important to you as it was to me, is fuel consumption; towing behind my 1.2 clio, up hills would go no faster than 40 really... i dropped gears, planted my foot to the floor and achieved a lot more noise, but no more speed. I attempted this technique all the way there and used a truley mind boggling amount of petrol for such a little modern car.

On the way back i didnt push it and settled for 40ish on the long inclines (letting others past if necceaary) and driving as normal on the flat. I found that i could achieve fairly regular speeds on the flat and was still plagued by the many speed cameras on the A68, however used roughly half the petrol.

Its just like burning money really.

Thats what i mean though, really going for it with a boat on the back when you havn't got the power, for example; up hills  (I suppose this might be more of an issue 'up north') or in your case, fast with a double trailer.

When driving less aggressively, fuel consumption isnt much of an issue. I guess the effect is also greatly increased with a smaller car, even that 0.4 difference will help.