Boat Trailer - Lesson Learned

So I’ve had my plate alloy 21 foot side console boat for 33 years:

In that time it’s had five outboards and three paint jobs. Up in the Hunter having its fourth paint job now:

I bought the boat from Sydney Aquariums in Darling Harbour and it came with a heavy galvanised twin axle trailer. With heavy usage – including four trips, towing the boat to Cooktown and back - something was always eventually going to break. And it did – at Banana, south of Rockhampton, on the way up to the Whitsundays. I had to get it trailered back to Sydney. As parts wore out and things fell off I just kept replacing them:

But, three years ago, I could no longer avoid an upgrade. Asked on the Facebook page:

Downrigger Shop

For advice. I get a lot of good recommendations there but this wasn’t one of those times. A recommendation was to get an aluminium trailer from a company I won’t mention, at Caringbah on the south side of Sydney. The reasons I’m not going to mention the company name is because:

1. It was part of a franchise, and I hear good things about the other outlets
2. The blokes’ business was failing and he was horribly depressed;
3. I don’t want anyone to think what happened wasn’t my fault

The trailer looked good to my untrained eye, on Day 1:

But when I drove it up to Shannon – from Shannon Outboards, at Hornsby – he was horrified. He started pointing out all the things wrong with it, and that was quite a list. Perhaps the most annoying aspect was that I had bought an aluminium trailer. It was definitely an aluminium frame! But a lot of the parts were steel, painted to look like aluminium. The boat was very sticky on the trailer, and I often had to back the Chev down the ramp to where the water is just touching the car tyres. Otherwise it’s too sticky to get off without some assisted pushing at the bow. Driving the boat on, not so bad:

With big plans for fishing up and down the coast during summer 2021/2022 I knew I had to get the trailer sorted with a front to rear overhaul. There was one bloke I trusted a lot, being Darren Frazer from Singleton Trailers in the Hunter Valley. He dropped everything to get me sorted with a little boat trailer problem on the way to chase bass at Lake St Clair, earlier this year:

Because of Covid, I couldn’t deliver the trailer. Darren drove down to the border of Greater Sydney, and picked it up:

I decided to get a Boat Latch bow release system, since I’m fishing solo so much during lockdowns:

Darren tossed the old twin rollers and fitted quad rollers:

Fitted new hubs and brakes and did a great job. But it cost as much as the trailer did, brand new. $7000:

I have no regrets – because the problem was caused by my original bad choice of trailer. And I couldn’t cut any corners, because otherwise I could end up back in the Banana situation, with the boat on a broken trailer over a thousand kilometres from home. Wanted to tell this little story to our readers! I should have done a lot more research and, at the very least, asked the 20,000 fishos on our Facebook and Instagram pages what they thought of this brand of trailer. I’m guessing most of our readers are way more switched on then I am. But maybe my experience is a good reminder to be careful, when you’re shelling out hard earned dollars. Thanks for reading
Andrew Hestelow

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