How to tow on the beach

Beach driving looks daunting if you’ve never done it. Perhaps it’s those images of vehicles bogged hopelessly, while the incoming tide rushes through them. Add a camper trailer or caravan – scary!

But it needn’t be that way if you take a little care and use a few ‘smarts’.

Let’s face it, driving for kilometres along a wild beach is about as free-spirited as it gets on land and with literally thousands of kilometres of driveable sand in Australia, it’s a pleasure you shouldn’t deny yourself if you have a 4WD vehicle with a camper trailer or caravan in tow.

This can be a bigger handicap that you might imagine in many modern faux-4WDs that use plastic undertrays for aerodynamic purposes or have protruding brake cooling ducts. While these are great on the bitumen, they can turn into sand scoops on the beach and the lower you sit, the more sand you will scoop... which in turn will get into your brakes, perhaps clog your transmission breather, etc, etc.

As you travel along the beach you’ll see plenty of evidence of this in the tortured plastic bits left by the wayside.

As a tip, don’t try to reverse a light SUV out of sand, or you may scoop even more and tear off its underbody covering. Forward is the preferred way.

Extra weight means that your vehicle will sit lower and will have less ground clearance. If you don’t really need all that stuff for your beach drive, leave it back at camp or don’t take it at all!

At some beachside towns, locals offer an oily underbody spray to protect your car from salt corrosion. In theory, it’s a good idea, but it can be messy to get off.

A thorough rinsing with clean water afterwards, making sure you get up into the crevices of the mudguards, will do just as well, but don’t overdo it with a high-pressure cleaner, or you may get water into the vehicle’s electrics.

Cool, damp sand is denser and won’t allow your vehicle to dig in like the soft, hot sand you’ll need to negotiate further up the beach if you travel in the heat of the day at high tide.

You can check tides times in most areas by your phone, but be sure they are the times for as close to where you will be travelling as possible, as they vary up the coast.

Another good reason to travel as early as possible is if you get stuck, you’ll have a better chance of getting help from passing travellers!

Generally, most people agree that 18psi is ideal both for tow cars and towed trailers, but that’s only a guide. You can probably get through on firm, cool, sand at  higher pressures, while you can also drop your tyre pressures much lower, but if you do the latter you run the risk of rolling the tyre off the rim, particularly if you try turning at the same time as you accelerate.

There are several useful devices on the market that allow you to pre-set your intended pressure before screwing them onto your tyre valve as a replacement for your valve cap.

These save a lot of time, as you can drop all your tow vehicle and trailer pressures at once.

The ‘budget’ way is to use a blunt object to depress the tyre valve fully and count the time it takes you to reach your desired pressure, Then, repeat the procedure on your other tyres, without a tyre gauge. One or two psi either way won’t make a difference at the reduced speed you’ll be travelling on the sand.

One reason is to avoid over-heating your deflated tyres, but another better one is to allow you time to stop if conditions change unexpectedly. Anyone who has travelled high on the beach on Fraser Island will know how fresh water inlets can sometimes erode the sand, leaving a cleavage up to a metre deep in the sand that I guarantee you won’t want to drop into!

As momentum is important to get you thorough soft sand, you should turn it off before heading across the soft and churned-up sand that usually separates the beach from its access road.

Once on the beach, you may prefer to go back to high range if the sand is cool and firm, but be prepared to drop back a gear if you strike a soft patch to maintain your momentum.

Let’s start with a shovel, which is the other essential item you should carry. I carry a three-piece Bushranger ‘Digger’, which is small enough to fit in the boot.

You need one to clear a path in front of each of your tyres down to the depth they are bogged, so that you are not pushing a wall of sand ahead of them.

As a next step, I’d try dropping pressures even further in your driven wheels – as low as 13-15psi. The extra ’bag’ in the tyres may make the difference, but you really should re-inflate them to regular sand-driving pressures once you get unstuck to avoid the possibility of rolling the tyre off the rim.

If that doesn’t work, you will need to put something solid in these trenches for the tyres to grip on, such as rocks, sticks, etc.

Even better, use a dedicated recovery product like a pair, or even four MaxTrax, which can be stored easily when not in use, but when placed in front of your tyres gives them a solid surface to bite on.

When you get traction, keep on going until you reach solid ground before recovering your MaxTrax.

Leaving the tyres low on rocky surfaces leaves their baggy walls exposed to rock damage or being pinched between the rim and the road; on bitumen, the rapid heat build-up can lead to premature sidewall and carcass failure.

If you plan to drive a few kilometres on bitumen to a convenient spot to reinflate them, keep your speed below 70km/h at the most and keep it slower if turning.

A regular hose with a good pressure should do the job, but if you’re using a coin-in-the-slot wash, make sure you get right underneath the vehicles and don’t get over-excited with the high-pressure spray on engine components.

Further reading:
The joys of beach camping