NCIS Fan Theories on How Gibbs Gets His Boat Out of the Basement: Tunnels, Trap Doors, Flooding and More!
TVLine asked, and you answered. And most of you, quite seriously!
In the wake of NCIS‘ quite eventful Season 18, finale, TVLine raised a series of “burning questions” — primarily sparked by, and including: How does Gibbs get his handcrafted boats of of his basement?
Whether in Comments or, among the especially motivated, email, you got back to us with a wide array of theories. Review them below, and tell us which extraction plan you think, in the words of Vinny Gambini, holds water. (Update: I feel compelled to remind you that multiple NCIS characters who have stood in Gibbs’ basement have themselves wondered/asked him how he gets the boat out. So it’s not as if the unseen wall is some obvious garage door.)
EASY DOES IT!
His basement had garage doors and a driveway outside. –Sharon
Gibbs cleared out his tools from cellar, and the wall to port side of Rule 91 had allowed for removal of boat OR the wall ahead of bow leads to a ramp to remove the boat, already on a trailer. –Mike
FLOATED IDEAS
Given how he was emptying all the tools out, I assume flooding is somehow involved? –LrdSlvrhnd
Gibbs did have his tools upstairs before the boat was removed. It may have floated out. –Bryant
TOOLING AROUND
Moving the tools from the basement was to make room for the moving of the boat. –T
If you remember, Gibbs had a bunch of his stuff upstairs when Tim came by. Gibbs gave him a so-so answer of rearranging the basement. He moves it out to hoist it up into the garage. –Al
UP, UP AND AWAY!
The ceiling in Gibbs’ basement matches the ceiling of the first floor. (Just look at the stairs and the ceiling height.) He hoists the boat up and with his tools he removes a portion of the back wall of his house and voila, it’s in the backyard. –Mark
I noticed a long time ago that Gibbs’ ceiling is over 14′ high, according to the steps to the landing. You never see the high part of the wall the boats are facing (all of them faced the same way), which means he had a boat launch and open wall system to get the boats up and out. Most ceilings in those type of houses are no more than 8′. –Phil
Gibbs gets his boat out by moving the garage floor and using a boat lift he borrows from the marina — he only needs it once every 10 years or so. It’s why he keeps that old, sturdy pickup truck… –Paulette
A crawl space under the front porch. All that is needed is about 4-1/2 feet clearance behind the tools hanging on the pegboard in basement. –Edward
THE WALL CAME TUMBLING DOWN
The boat goes out through a wall that is torn so precisely it could pass without a scratch. It’s no big business to reconstruct a wall –just beton stone (with forged holes) and blended cement or concrete. It’s done in 2-5 days. I think all of Gibbs’ boats have gone through a wall in the cellar. It’s just a tear down affair, and Gibbs is a craftsman in both wood and building or brick or stone-laying. –Carl
HOLEY MOLY!
He gets the boats out through the basement floor. His house is built over tunnels once used by bootleggers, which had to be big enough to move large barrels onto large trucks. Also, he and Ziva escaped into tunnels when they were trapped in basement. –Emma
Either the ceiling, wall, or a tunnel under the boat, since he’s always been building something there. –Sandi
WERE WE JUST LOOKING AT IT WRONG?
He turned the boat on its side. That is what my husband did. –Ethel
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST….
It’s a movie set. The walls are movable. The crew just slides the walls out of the way, back the boat trailer in, and put the boat on the trailer and drive it away. –RJ
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