Hi guys! Help, please!
I want to mount the winch & 3rd wheel I bought (supposedly the right ones for my trailer/setup) and when I was picking up the new boat, the people at the dealer said it wouldn't fit. I'm not sure if that's right, I've seen some pix on this site that show winches mounted on the trailer, only difference I can see is the bowstop roller would be tilted toward the boat and the winch tilted back, instead. There was talk that it could hit the car on a turn? Which leads me to wonder—looking at the pix of my old (2014) TI on the trailer: can I move the boat and/or the cradle further back? (I can't really move the rear cradle back any further than it is now, and used the guidelines on this site for measuring the distance between the cradles last summer.) I don't see how I can mount that 3rd wheel though, I just don't see that there's clearance from the front of the trailer. I have to take apart the front in any event: the dealer didn't put on the front lights, and my husband has to wire them in.
As to 'you don't need a winch': It's true when both of us are out that a winch isn't needed to get the boat back on the trailer, but I'd like the option of going it alone, and I can't easily do it myself. And, yeah, emergency brake and chocks behind the front wheels if I do that, I've seen/heard what can happen. The 3rd wheel—the trailer sits in the yard on the low side of the ground, and it isn't terribly easy to roll uphill with one's back in an awkward position.
Any thoughts on properly doing this? Thanks in advance!
http://s1278.photobucket.com/user/susanr5/slideshow/Hobie%20for%20winch