Heffleys' boat
The Heffley's Boat was a mid-sized motorboat owned by the Heffley family in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul. It was bought by Frank Heffley. It was later given away to two Spanish people who drove the Heffley family home when their minivan had one of it's tires deflated.
Role
Greg says that one day, when Susan sent Frank out to buy some milk for the family, he ended up bringing home a boat instead. Susan was upset that Frank bought something like that without checking with her first, but ultimately let him keep it after Frank explained that it had always been a dream of his to own a boat and that he, Susan and their sons could use it as a way to bond and spend time together. However, Frank was ultimately never able to use the boat until The Long Haul because:
- 1.) Just a few days after buying the boat, some people from their neighborhood's Homeowners Association told Frank that there are rules against having a boat parked in front of your house, so Frank was forced to move it to the backyard, where it ended up sitting for the rest of the summer because he ultimately never had any time to be able to use the boat.
- 2.) Once the fall season came in, one of Frank's coworkers informed that he was going to have to winterize his boat to protect it from the cold weather—but when Frank looked into it and discovered that it would cost more to winterize the boat that it did to have bought the boat in the first place, he chose not to winterize the boat. But this came back to bite Frank when the the temperature dropped and the boat's hull got a huge crack in it.
- 3.) Once it started snowing, Frank moved the boat to under the house's old deck, where it sat all winter. Once spring came in, Susan started using the boat to store all sorts of junk from the house.
- 4.) When the summer came, Frank decided to fix the boat, but when he went to pull out the boat from under the deck, but discovered that there was a family of raccoons living their old washing machine. He was originally going to have an exterminator get rid of the raccoons, but when he learned how expensive it would be, he decided to get rid of the raccoons himself. But by then, Manny had heard about the baby raccoons living in the old washing machine, and Susan stepped in to stop Frank. And the boat's been sitting there ever since.
For the road trip, the family ended up using the boat to store all the stuff they had packed that wouldn't fit into their minivan. They were ultimately never able to get the boat out onto the water and at the end of The Long Haul, Susan convinced Frank that they should give the boat to the two Spanish-speaking men who helped them get home as "thank you" present.