Electric Boat Winch

This coming June I am going to Michigan for a week to do some fishing. I have a 17.5’ Aluminum Bass Boat with a 40HP Yamaha engine. The lakes and river systems where I am going do not allow “power loading” on the boat ramps, in other words, you cannot use the big motor to drive the boat up onto the trailer, you have to float it onto the trailer as far as it will go then winch it up the rest of way. Most of the boat trailers up there, especially for the bigger boats, have roller bunks instead of cloth bunks, which makes it considerably easier to winch the boat up onto the trailer. I don’t know how much my boat & motor actually weigh but I do know that every once in a while I have had to use the winch to get the boat all the way on and it takes some hard cranking on the winch to get it in place. A couple of times when I have tried moving the trailer deeper to let the boat float more, the bow then got stuck under the bow roller when I tried to use the winch and then I had to back the boat off again to get the bow above the roller. What a pain!

Anyhow, I am thinking of buying an electric winch for the trailer and just bring the boat on as far as it will go, hook up the winch cable and use the winch to power the boat onto the trailer. Has anyone every used a power winch on your boat trailer? If so, do you have any suggestions for me? And, especially would anyone have any idea how big a winch I would need?

I have several winches in mind I could buy so I am not looking for recommendations, just how useful it may or may not be.

Thanks,

Grumpy.

Try this...you should be able to go with the smaller unit.

[URL]http://www.overtons.com/modperl/product/details.cgi?r=view&i=87127&cID=SHOPPING[/URL]

Thanks for the recommendation, i added a bit to my post as I have several winch in mind, I am just not sure about whether that is useful are not.

Grumpy.

Got plenty of information from the KY board and I am going to get an electric winch from Ebay.

Thanks,
grumpy