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Buzz,
First off, congratulations on your new acquisition. You have an exciting summer of sailing and learning about your new boat ahead of you.
Now, on to the trailer issue. I seriously doubt that the material used to build the trailer has much to do with the way it behaves behind the tow vehicle. Many other things affect the characteristics of how a trailer tows. Weight is certainly an issue, but more than the overall weight is the distribution of the weight. Too much tongue weight puts an unnecessary load on the towing vehicle, too little tongue weight will cause the trailer to "walk" or "sway" behind the vehicle. In extreme cases when towing VERY Heavy trailers if you don't have enough tongue weight, you get into a "Tail wagging the Dog" scenario. If you ever have it happen to you, you will never ever forget it. keep in mind, that even a double or triple stacked set of Hobie's lacks the weight necessary to do that.
Other things that affect the way a trailer behaves are distance from tongue to axle, tire size, and number of axles.
I've seen Canadian Hobie 18 sailor Paul Evendon add a "tag axle to a trailer for towing a triple stack of 18's, to help control the side sway. Primarily, I think, to spread the weight over 4 tires instead of two and also to eliminate the need to change a flat on the side of the Interstate. even if he had a flat, one tire on a side would get him to the next off ramp and out of harms way. I think he felt that was necessary because the windage of passing Semi's would rock the trailer so badly he was worried about it blowing off the jack while changing the tire.
The closer the axle is to the tongue of the trailer, the more quickly the trailer will change directions when backing. An example is those little bitty jetski trailers are a biatch to back up because they over react very quickly to any change in steering angle.
The advantages of an aluminum trailer are obvious to even the most casual of observers, Light weight, and corrosion resistance.
The down side is not so obvious, compared to galvanized steel aluminum is significantly more "brittle". While I have never had the pleasure of owning an aluminum trailer, my neighbor has one for his power boat, and he is fanatic about checking all the welds before, during and after every trip. He has had to have a couple of the "stress points" on the trailer rewelded on a couple of different occasions.
Once again, Congratulations on you new toy, have fun learning to sail it to its potential, and keep an eye on the welds and stress points on that new trailer.
Stephen
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If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, maybe it is time to water your own lawn.
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