I boated most of my life although it was usually much smaller ski type boats (as you can see in my avatar) and boat of the size you want with all the features would likely be around 23' or bigger and with all the extras you require will make the boat pretty heavy. The boat in my avatar is 18' and fairly light and I towed it with an Astro Van with a stock 4.3 litre v6 and loaded for camping and a few people in the van was just a bit under the limit I would recommend. A boat you are looking for would likely need something like an F250 with a decent size V8 or a diesel with lots of torque. Look up the towing capacity of your truck and then check out weights of boats that fit your needs as underpowering with a tow vehicle not made to handle the load will cause more wear and tear and likely premature breakdowns.
You know what boat stands for, right? bring out another thousand. Ha! Dad jokes rule. but seriously, I heard the best two days in a boat owners life are the day they buy it, and the day they sell it.
i always considered the size of the tow vehicle in relation to its' ability to stop the boat and trailer a more compelling reason for going 3/4 ton and up. his toyota will be able to pull and haul a large boat, just not safely. especially backing down the ramp.
Yes, it's a combination of many things. Many boat trailers of larger boats will usually have trailer brakes as well to help with braking.
i currently fish a 24' diesel skipjack and tow it with a '96 gmc 3500. i have electric trailer brakes but there still are wet rainy days that even my combo gives me pause traveling down to the harbor.
The greatest boat trip of my life was when some friends and I rented a houseboat at the Ice Harbor Dam in the Tri Cities and took it up the Snake river to the Palouse and then on up to Lewiston/Clarkston, and then back down to the Ice Harbor dam. Beautiful country. Actually locked through a dam half drunk because everyone else was hammered. Towed a ski boat with us. Water skied, fished, got a couple of big buckets of cracked range balls, so we would hit them with golf clubs off the roof of the houseboat at cows as we were cruising up the river. Also brought my stereo from home and set it up, speakers on the roof, blasting tunes in the canyons.
No coke and hookers. We did have 2 kegs on board. Fucking things took a day to settle down because I drove them up from Portland in the back of my truck. Didn't know Washington campgrounds were booze free. We'd tie up for the night at a campground dock and we'd have 20+ people come party on our houseboat. A couple of times we had to go out into the middle of the river to party and then ferry people back to shore because we were so noisy.
