98 238- best trailer, bunks or rollers?

hancoveguy · **Posted:** Fri Nov 14, 2008 7:06 pm

Hello all,
Ultra novice boater here with a question or 2. Buying/bought a 98 238 Vista, have to get a trailer for it. Can't decide whether to get bunks or rollers. Rollers are a bit more expensive but if they are that much better what's a few hundred bucks. Will probably only trailer a few times a year but it will sit on the trailer all winter, every winter.

Also, it was a salt water boat and now to make it a lake boat I have to add a gray water tank and pump out. Any thoughts on either issue would be helpful.

Also, tossing around putting some lights under the swim platform, anyone had a good experience with this...

thanks

jrcinnh · **Joined:** Fri Sep 14, 2007 9:13 am **Posts:** 313

hancoveguy welcome, I suggested you come here from the Winnipesaukee site and now no one is helping. This place is a little slow especially in the off season but there are helpful people here.

You might try the trailer question in the general section or with the smaller boats. I don't know enough to offer an opinion.

On gray water, I owned two boat with gray water systems and they both work like this:

All the sinks, the shower, and the air conditioner condensate drain into shower sump. The shower sump pumps this water into a tank. On my Searay it pumped it into the same black water tank that the toliet used. On my Four Winns there is a separate tank for gray water.

If you don't plan to use your shower too much, the shared tank is a resonable choice. We only used the shower on the Searay once or twice because it filled the tank damn quick. Other times we used the marina shower. If you need to use your boat shower, you really want a gray water tank.

Mounting this tank is the biggest part of the job. You need one of the polypropolene tanks and you need to have a way to pump it out. That means another deck plate to hook up the marina pumpout and another vent line.

Assuming your boat has a shower, the shower already drains to shower sump and pumps overboard. There is a hose from the pump to a thru-hull. You have to find that hose and remove it from the thru-hull. Now you need to reroute the hose or add another hose to either your black water tank or your new gray water tank. You may need to block the old thru-hull, but be careful sometimes it shared by the sump pumps, they still need to drain overboard.

Now you have to re-route the sink drains to the shower sump. On non-gray boats, some sinks just drain directly out the side of the boat. You have to close off those and route them to the shower sump or maybe directly to the black/gray water tank, if it's all down hill. On the non-gray version of my boats the galley and head sinks already drained to the shower sump, but the cockpit sink drained directly overboard. You can find out with colored water, that's how the DES will check you.

I don't think they care about air conditioner condensate, so you can leave it where ever it goes now or connect it to the shower sump.

This whole conversion is a lot of work but not really that challenging unless you add a tank.

captwalt · **Posted:** Sat Nov 15, 2008 10:45 am

Let me preface my response with I have never owned rollers.

I personally would recommend bunks. Everything I have heard, seen or read about rollers is that without the proper maintenance those rollers end up becoming a royal PITA. The reality is that your boat is going to require maintenance. Hopefully most of it is preventative. Nevertheless I would not add the roller trailer maintenance to this equation.

I have a 248 on an aluminum bunk trailer. Never had any issues. I will look at replacing the carpet on the bunks sometime in july.

Best,

Walter

hancoveguy · **Posted:** Sat Nov 15, 2008 3:10 pm

Thank you both for the replies. I think the bunks have won out. as for the gray water tank... i think I will have someone add it for me.

thanks again and look for more questions and participation fom me

thanks

captwalt · **Posted:** Sat Nov 15, 2008 9:49 pm

I forgot to reply regarding the LEDs. This is a good thread on the subject viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1706.

Welcome aboard

Buzzcut · **Posted:** Sat Nov 15, 2008 10:20 pm

Welcome also, personally I've owned seven boats and two of those had rollers and were nothing but problems in the long run. My vote is for the bunk trailer. Good luck with your decision.

jrcinnh · **Joined:** Fri Sep 14, 2007 9:13 am **Posts:** 313

I'm sure Winnisquam marine could do your conversion and there are a couple of independent marine mechanics on the lake that can do it.

Do you plan to sleep on the lake? Where will you be slipping?

hancoveguy · **Posted:** Sun Nov 16, 2008 11:15 am

I have a slip in Hanson cove in Moultonborough. we may sleep on it here and there but not often.

M3eater · **Posted:** Mon Nov 17, 2008 7:05 pm

I would also check out Melvin Village Marina (Four Winns dealer, just down the road from you), for the gray water conversion. I don't know if the '98 model year ever offered gray-water as an option. If it did, they can install the tank. Both the gray and black water tanks are under the mid-cabin bunk on the 1999-up trailerable Vista models, and the tanks are accessible by removing the decking under the cushions. Running the hoses may be a bit of a job.

Bunks are the way to go on the trailer.

cougarcruiser · **Posted:** Mon Nov 17, 2008 11:01 pm

Bunks are the way to go.

Rollers are nice, but scare me a little. If the strap breaks or you encounter an issue, that boat will slide off like nothing. With bunks, you have to float/drive the boat onto the trailer, but to me - just seems a little safer.

As for the gray water tank -- I would leave that to the pros.

I live in Seattle and have experience with Winnisquam Marine out there... I don't think you'll find anything negative about them. Give 'em a call and talk to Ryan. Mention the forum or some of the members on here that refer Winnisquam - and he'll get you set up.

Flying Sushi · **Posted:** Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:21 am

+ for Cougar… I would go with banks... far more stable as long as you adjust them to your boat property. Melvin Village Marina is close to you but I would check out Winnisquam Marine as well. They have super reputations for service (and sales) and take great care of their customers. Their business is doing good even with this bad economy and they are a very reputable dealer.

powellcrazy · **Posted:** Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:47 am

I vote for bunks as well. I believe they support the hull more uniformly vs roller that only contact in spots.

I am confused about the gray water tank, my boat is a inland lake boat, I do not have a gray water tank, is this required where you boat or you just want this?? I just use bio-degradable soaps. Really not very much "gray water" goes overboard, we go out for a extended weekend with 20 gallons of fresh and come back with 80% of it.

We mostly use hot water shower on the swim deck that draws lake water through the engine block to heat it up.

cougarcruiser · **Posted:** Tue Nov 18, 2008 12:43 pm

Powellcrazy -

You should be confused... most areas in the US do not have a mandate or regulation requiring use of a gray water tank. spent water from the sink/showers are allowed to flow into lakes/rivers alot of the time.

However, some areas (New Hampshire is one of them) forbids the so-called contamination of their waters with gray water matter. They mandate that all waste -- showers, sinks, toilets, etc be held and pumped out appropriately.

Kind of odd for those of us who have never had to deal with that regulation - but still considered normall for the Lakes region boaters up in the northeast.

M3eater · **Posted:** Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:59 pm

YES .... that's part that really sucks about it is that there is no "grand -fathering"! ALL boats on inland waters must have no overboard discharge, be it an old wood cruiser or a new model as of the year that the law was enacted (don't recall what year that was, but it was just recently).

You can't really buy a used boat that has not already been a NH lake boat, with the gray water added (or optioned new) .... or the water systems dissabled, if you plan on using it on Winni (or any other lake).

We love our "new to us" 268 and we got a good deal on it, but we passed up a lot of other boats with options that we wanted, because they did not have gray water.

cougarcruiser · **Posted:** Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:55 pm

Hey Gordon - how tough is the retrofit? It sounds like you've done some investigations on this before?

It is do-able, isn't it? At least, for a realistic price?

www.iFourWinns.com

98 238- best trailer, bunks or rollers?

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