On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 00:12:41 -0800, "QLW" wrote:

Unless you need to often trailer long distance , brakes are just not worth
the effort...(if you launch in salt water!) I've lived within spitting
distance of salt water for most of my life and rust is just a given. I
have four boat trailers and none of them have brakes. Would I like to have
brakes? Do I need the brakes to travel really safely? Hell Yes! But
unless I'm willing to pull the wheels and drums every time after I launch in
salt water, the brakes will be junk the next time that I use the trailer.
Been there...Done that! Same reason that I galvanize almost every trailer
that I build and plan to keep.
We are planning to do a lot of fresh water sailing for a few years now, and
I'm going to add brakes to the trailer that we are going to tow. But when
we trailer to salt water I'll use a non-brake equipped trailer. I have a
friend whose 5 year old factory build galvanized trailer has springs and
brakes that are completey rusted out. My solution? Replace the springs
with single leaf mobile home springs instead of multi-leaf springs that
allow the salt water to be trapped between the leaves and ****-can the
brakes. Hey, most of the brakes on salt water trailers don't work
anyway...better to drive knowing that you don't have brakes than to think
that you do when you in fact...you don't!! Once the trailed weight gets
beyond 5000 lbs, then the rules change. You just have to have brakes and
completely cleaning and spraying them with an anti-rust after every launch
into salt water is the only choice.

I always drive as if I didn't have brakes on the trailer, but they
exist and I need to deal with them.

Interesting advice on the springs - I'll look into that.

Thanks.

Later,

Tom
S. Woodstock, CT
----------
"We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries:
Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless
God never did and so, if I might be judge, God never did make
a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling."

Izaak Walton "The Compleat Angler"(1653)