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What am I doing wrong?

When loading on to trailer, I crank the bow winch in as much as I can. I note the bow is making contact with the rubber bow roller. But, when I pull trailer out of the water, I end up with a 1/2 to 1 inch gap between the bow roller and the bow.

I think I could manhandle the crank and pull the bow back to the roller but I feel nervous that I'm going to break something. So today I backed the boat back into the water and then was able to crank the slack out. Once again, the bow appeared to contact the roller. I pulled up out of water a second time and noted a 1/8 inch gap between roller and bow. This time I manhandled the the crank about one notch and managed to get the bow to contact the roller.

This is a 2017 170 Montauk I bought last year. Prior to that I've owned 13' Sports. Those never gave me this weird roller gap problem. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong with the Montauk. Cranking winch too much or not enough or what?

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You may be loading the trailer too far in the water.

When the boat settles as you drive away, it moves back.

Place a piece of tape on the left front fender face to mark the water line where you dunk the trailer.

Next time, stop short of that line by 1-2" and retrieve the boat.

If you pull the trailer out and the boat is not up tight, winch it tight.

Also - the winch should be positioned so that the bottom of the roller touches the top of the bow eye. The winch strap should be pulling level.

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Brilliant. Makes sense. Will try it today.

One more question. I normally use the bunks as an indicator of how deep to back up trailer. As in, I try to have about the front 1/3 of the bunks out of the water. This seemed to work well on my prior boats. Perhaps it is leading me astray on my present boat. You are suggesting a fender reference. Is there any advantage?

I've always wondered if my bunk-reference is faulty due to incline angle of ramps, which varies.

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Easier to see the forward face of the fender in your drivers side mirror.

Then again, if you use multiple ramps, you may need different colored lines to distinguish them. All ramps are not the same.

At one point I had colored strips of tape.