Boat trailer Bunk Or Rollers?
I would avoid the trailers with the rollers on the keel, I have had three types of trailers, bunks(drive on), rollers on keel, and rollers on sides(drive on). Of the three the worst was the keel rollers. The biggest drawbacks of the keel rollers is they require much more water and winching to get the boat on, they also have a tendency of scraping the keel if you miss. I had a 19ft. Invader with bunks and I was able to drive the boat on and get it centered every time easily, it only ever took two turns of the winch to get it tight and secure. The full roller trailers are even better since there is less surface tension to overcome although you do have to maintain these rollers to prevent scuffing if they freeze up. The major key is to have a trailer that keeps the boat as low as possible to the ground, this makes launching easier.
Because of the light weight and shallow draught of your boat it should be easy to launch/retrieve with either type.The boat that i have only comes out of the water for maintenance but i use a brenderup trailer with hinged rollers(6 sets)+centre rollers(8) and i can get the boat on first time easily provided the trailer isn’t too deep in the water and i have a good man on the winch(boat weighs just short of 2ton) My last boat however was a small day-fisher that came on a trailer that had 3 centre rollers and one set of hinged rollers at the rear and it was an absolute pig to retrieve and whilst travelling i hit a pothole and the hinged roller on one side split the hull,i didn’t notice until the next launch when the ruddy thing sank! So if you go for rollers make sure theres plenty of them to spread the weight whilst travelling.
My best friend has a 22-foot fishing boat. He HAD a trailer that was all rollers (not sure if it was a rollercoaster set-up or not) and he had a lot of problems because the rollers were on hinged arms. It made loading the boat back on the trailer very difficult unless you had the boat lined up just perfectly — if you didn’t, the hinges went in all kinds of crazy directions and didn’t hit the boat right (READ: Great potential for a damaged hull, bent hinges, and/or damaged rollers). He dumped that trailer for one with a bunk set-up, and that one works MUCH better.
