You may not be overweight, but you are to close to be playing games with the tongue weight.
Your trailer is 4000 max, and it specs like you will pack carefully. Max 610 lbs including 28 gallons of water w/o anything in the black tank, and you will have something in the black tank even if it is a couple gallons and a toilet pack. Add more weight in black tank hose, fresh water hose, kitchen spices and cookware, cleaning supplies, towels, you wont have much left.
Your tow vehicle has a cargo capacity of about 1500. Subtract 2 people, 495lb trailer tongue weight, gasoline, kayak, hullavator, lunch, and you have very little wiggle room.
Grease your balls, cross your chains, dont buy souvenirs, and leave a lot of room in front of you. Going wont be a problem, stopping could be interesting.
I think a new tow vehicle would be prudent. I am all into overkill in that regard. I tow a 6000lb trailer with a tow that has 12-13000 max.
I really like that you recommended greasing the ball, so few people do that.
I tow full time as well as for others and I always grease, even when using my pintle.
If it rusts and wears, grease it. You have the grease gun out anyway to put a zerk in your hubs, only takes a second.
We’re back from the first kayak outing with the trailer and boats. Total trip was approximately 1,100 miles.
We had zero problems towing including 2 “red zone” thunderstorms and a crazy truck driver that tried to merge into us, congrats to @Lillyflowers for getting hard on the brakes and congrats to me for not messing up the brake controller install.
I’m estimating we’re still about 200lbs under the 4,000 limit on the trailer, no swaying issues so rear loading really helped lighten the tongue weight. We pulled 147lbs of middle seat out of the Subaru, that helped with loading “stuff” in the tow vehicle. We travel with full water tanks, for tongue weight purposes, and empty black/grey tank. We had about 50lbs of clothing and bedding (weighed when I emptied the trailer today) and I’m going to guess another 50 lbs of foot, wild guess, and probably 100lbs of support equipment, tools, RV crap, etc…
Here’s the new boat!
That’s picking it up in Cambridge MD, I’d give it an 8 out of 10 for condition. Price was $500 which is a steal. I know I can sell that boat up here for $750 easy.
It is a Necky Manitou 14, gently used. The owner lives a block from Cheasepeake Bay but has 2 other boats, stored covered or indoors. I knew from reviews that this boat wouldn’t s*ck and it was better than I expected. If I had owned this before I bought my Cetus I might never have gone shopping, it’s that good. (And I’m never selling the Cetus, ok, maybe never, I love it that much, but this boat is really fine. If you like sea kayaks and want a rock boat, or a short boat, check it out, and no, mine isn’t for sale.)
Now back to beating the dead horse… The old rule of thumb to never tow more than 80% (or is it 70% or 90%) of the manufacturer’s rating is just, in my opinion, and old tale. You see, SAE developed the J2807 standard so the manufacturer’s couldn’t lie. If your manufacturer builds to J2807, you can tow that amount.
How did the Subaru do? It was fabulous. We had the aforementioned storms, insane truck driver, big uphills, and big downhills. We got about 14.5mpg while towing, which pleased us (we get 11 to 12 up here since we have hills), we had 2 situations where we had short on-ramps and just punched, the CVT revved the engine to about 5,500 rpm and she got up to speed. No sway, no shimmy. Perfect.
Oh, and @Lillyflowers’ boat did touch when we got home, trying to back it into the space. We’ll have to mount both a little forward to prevent that, the angle was extreme but not jackknifed. No damage to the boat or trailer.
The touch was a surprise considering we did hard turns with @Marshall before I bought the Stellar. This was a real surprise to both of us.
I’m glad you had a good trip. I do notice that the Necky is right side up.
Congrats on the boats and trip! My brother has that same Necky and it’s a surprisingly fun little boat.
aah a trip to get a boat… Glad your towing experience was good… I still stick to the old rule as our travels take us across a lot of mountains… like the Rockies and the Rock… We get great mileage in Maine as most of the roads follow river valleys…
You had a nice flatland trip. My daughter worked with someone who thought the Berkshires were Everest… He was from Alabama on assignment in Mass.
I had an old friend decades ago that proudly showed me the land they just bought, it was one of the highest places in Florida. LOL, I stood looking around, looked flat to me!
It was the same length as @Lillyflowers’ boat which has almost vertical bow and stern, and since her’s didn’t touch on the test I did see a need to turn my upside down.
However, post touch, I’ll likely turn it upside down.
The Berkshires are gentle rolling hills! The entire time I was in MD/DE I kept commenting how flat it was. Perhaps not Florida flat but flat to a northerner.
Good deal! And you’re right about what they usually sell for. I just saw a pair of 12 footers of this model listed for $750 each in Manchester.
2 boats…y/n? …Just get longer bars…there are multiple types of racks out there aren’t there…y/n?
2 boats, yes.
Longer bars would work if we didn’t have hullavators, they have a max overhang, 8" if I recall, and we’re at 6" now.
And once you have a hullavator you never go back.
We have contact!
Fortunately we were watching for it. We’re pulling out of a campsite and the Subaru is going very uphill. I hadn’t thought about how that would affect the trailer dynamics. No damage.
More leverage on vehicle less weight on front axle.
You could always add another Stellar S14 to the fleet as your travel kayaks.
Funny man.
But, that wouldn’t work, the S14 would have touched if it was on the drivers’s side, it’s exactly long as the Manitou. Sweet boat though!
You could carry your kayak(s) on a diagonal. Then, hitting the trailer will be the least of your worries. 
