Towing a trailer- weight distribution.

[oldharry]

I had made a mistake with a trailer, I bought the New trailer from the St Malo yacht broker who I bought the boat from.
They had mislead me about what the boat weighed, they said it weighed 1800 kilos. The French trailer I bought would carry 2000 kilos.

After towing the boat home to my house in Brittany on looking at the trailer I thought that the tyres looked to be bulging excessively, (I had been an Mot Tester in 1963) I towed the boat to a weighbridge and the combined weight was 2200 kilos, being 200 kilos overloaded.
I later found out that when my inboard diesel boat was being ordered when new you could buy a an additional fuel tank, an anchor & chain and and on the transom an auxiluary 9hp outboard.

Quite possibly not deliberate. The builders quoted weight was often the 'dry' weight of just the hull, without any gear, rig, engine and tanks. I made that mistake too many years ago, and queried it with the builders. It was an odd quirk, but the builders reasoning was that the boat could be fitted with a range of different gear, sails, engines, cookers, anchor and chain etc so they would only quote the bare hull weight minus these essentials. Brokers are liable to not realise/ forget this, and just quote the statted builders weight.

Also, did you allow for the actual weight of the trailer itself? They can be surprisingly heavy so that the loaded train weight can be well above the plated load capacity of the trailer.