Meeting Trailorboat #132

I knew almost nothing about Trailorboats when I bought one.

Seriously. A few days earlier, I couldn't have told you what a Trailorboat was. Then #132 appeared on my screen, and somehow I already knew I wanted her.

I had been looking for a teardrop camper. After selling my Jayco, I started converting my Ford Escape into something I could camp in, with a bed, storage, power and the basics I would need to get away for a few days. I had already learned that I didn't need a huge RV to be comfortable, and honestly, I didn't want one. The Escape was working, but a little teardrop seemed like the obvious next step. I could keep everything simple, tow it easily, and have an actual camper waiting behind me when I got where I was going.

Then I saw #132 for sale on Facebook.

She was small. She was fiberglass. She had these beautiful molded curves, a dramatic spear running down the side, tiny windows—and, for some reason, a boat sitting on her roof. The whole thing looked like someone in 1960 had been asked to imagine the future of camping and was given absolutely no adult supervision.

I loved her.

The fact that she was basically all white probably helped. I am an artist, and when I see something like that my brain immediately starts changing colors, adding details and imagining what it could become. I wasn't looking at an old white trailer. I was already seeing teal metallic fiberglass, pearl white, chrome, a custom floor, a tiny kitchen and all the little details I could hide throughout it.

But before I could start redesigning something I knew absolutely nothing about, I needed to figure out what the hell I was looking at.

So I started researching Trailorboats.

That is when things got interesting.

I learned that the boat wasn't something somebody had added later. The boat was the whole point. Trailorboat Engineering Company in San Rafael, California, had actually manufactured these little fiberglass camping trailers with removable boats designed to travel directly on top. You could tow one little package to the campground, set up the camper, take the boat off and go out on the water.

And the more I learned, the stranger it became that I had never heard of them.

Production lasted only a few years. Records are scattered. Photographs turn up in old advertisements, family albums and online forums. Some of the history seems to survive because somebody remembered something their parents or grandparents owned sixty years ago. And today, only 29 Trailorboats are known to survive.

At some point during all of this research, I realized something else.

I had seen one before.

I grew up near Reno, and Hot August Nights was basically part of summer. Every year the city filled with classic cars, chrome, tailfins, old music and thousands of people who came to celebrate them. Somewhere in those years, I remember seeing a little camper with a boat sitting on top of it. I thought it was cool, but I assumed somebody had custom built it.

I had no idea I was looking at a Trailorboat.

Apparently the universe gave me one preview and I wasn't paying attention.

This time I was.

I started talking with Daryl and Kathy, who had #132 and had already begun working on her. The more we talked, the more I understood that there was more behind their decision to let her go than simply selling an unfinished project. That part of their story isn't mine to share, but some of what Daryl told me hit very close to home. I understood what it was like to have your plans interrupted by something you never saw coming, and to suddenly think differently about the time you have and what you want to do with it.

Since being shot in my right eye in 2024, I have thought a lot about the things I still want to see and the places I still want to go. I had also experienced homelessness after the shooting, and camping had taken on a completely different meaning for me. My Ford Escape had been transportation, shelter and sometimes simply a safe place to be. When I started converting it for camping, part of what I was doing was giving myself the reassurance that wherever life took me, I would always have somewhere I could sleep.

So yes, I was buying a camper because I wanted to camp again. But I was also trying to reclaim some freedom.

The more I talked with Daryl and Kathy, the harder it became to imagine #132 going anywhere else.

So I bought her.

I paid $2,900, which is especially funny because I had sold my much newer Jayco for $1,400. I was also fortunate to have some help making it happen. Someone who had seen the plans for my Escape conversion had offered to help me with that project, and the amount I had budgeted for it happened to be almost exactly what I needed to buy #132 instead.

The restoration is obviously going to cost considerably more.

When I finally went to pick her up, I had one immediate thought: She's tiny.

I knew the dimensions. I had seen the photographs. None of this information was new to me. But somehow my brain had ignored all of it and created a much larger camper. I think I had mentally put her somewhere closer to the size of a 16-foot Airstream Bambi, so standing next to an approximately four-by-eight-foot Trailorboat was a reality check.

Then I climbed inside.

Suddenly, she didn't seem tiny at all.

After living and sleeping in a Ford Escape, four feet by eight feet feels surprisingly luxurious. I started mentally laying everything out almost immediately. There was room for a mattress, refrigerator, storage, a little kitchen and the things I actually needed. Better yet, I didn't have to finish any of it before I could go camping. I could literally throw my mattress inside and use her now.

That realization changed how I started thinking about the restoration.

I don't want #132 to disappear into a garage for years and suddenly emerge as a perfectly finished object. I want to camp with her. I want to take her to shows. I want people to see the unfinished fiberglass, the repairs and the discoveries. When I change something, I want to document what was there first and why I made the decision I did. The restoration itself is part of her next chapter.

And there is a surprising amount to document.

For something that has been around for more than sixty years, #132 has retained an incredible amount of her original character. That doesn't mean she's ready to go. Splashdown definitely isn't going in the water tomorrow. The underside of the boat has damage that looks like it may have been dragged across gravel or pavement at some point, and there are indications that the boat—and possibly the trailer—may have been stolen sometime during their history. There are scratches, repairs and mysteries I haven't figured out yet.

But the old California license plate survived. The vessel registration numbers are still on the boat. The original oars survived, including their old leather grips. Most of the original hardware is still there. Even many of the little things that could easily have disappeared during six decades of owners, moves and repairs somehow stayed with her.

And then there is TRH 132.

While working on the trailer tongue, Daryl found the original identifying stamp. When the tongue needed to be replaced, he cut out the section containing the number and had it welded into the new one rather than letting that little piece of her history disappear.

That number is why she is #132.

And once I knew that, I wanted to know everything else.

I've had this happen to me before. Years ago, I discovered a historic Rainbow Flag signed by Gilbert Baker, who created the Rainbow Flag. That discovery eventually helped lead to three more historic signed flags being identified. One of them later traveled with me to Malta, where I presented it to members of the Ukrainian Pride contingent during the closing of an international LGBTQ human-rights conference.

That experience changed the way I look at objects.

History isn't always sitting in a museum with a little card explaining why it's important. Sometimes nobody has written the card yet. Things get tucked into boxes, left in garages, passed from one person to another, painted over, modified, forgotten or thrown away because nobody realizes there is a story attached to them.

I think vintage trailers suffer from that more than most things.

We have literally turned “trailer trash” into an insult, so it isn't surprising that an old camper sitting behind a barn doesn't always get treated like a piece of American design history. But that's exactly what some of these are. They reflect how people traveled, how they vacationed, what materials manufacturers were experimenting with and even what Americans imagined the future might look like.

And sometimes one of them has a boat on the roof.

There are only 29 Trailorboats currently known to survive, but I don't believe those are necessarily the only 29 left. There may be another one sitting in a garage somewhere. There may be one under a tarp in somebody's backyard. Someone may have inherited one and have no idea what it is.

I know how easily that can happen because I once stood in front of a Trailorboat at Hot August Nights, thought that's cool, and kept walking.

Now I own one.

And this time, I'm paying attention.

-Oxean