Anyone with experience please advise.

The trailer came with a  10:1 manual winch that I couldn't easily turn by  the winch handle so replaced that with  a different manual winch with a low gear of 15:1.  I use  1: 1 to manually start and get the bow a metre or so up the trailer and then use the battery drill.

Definitely needs the long clamp on handle that clamps around the housing to counteract  the torque.....pushing down on that handle quite hard but the boat comes up fast......maybe 45 sec or so.

I like the simplicity and the fact that if anything goes wrong , I still have the manual winch   which I know works fine but just hard work.

I have no faith in a $200 winch.  A priced a Superwinch back at the time I decided to go with the battery drill and it was more like $1600 or $1700 and on top of that was heavy duty wiring back to the vehicle battery or the cost of a second battery mounted on the trailer , so not exactly cheap.

Highly recommend if you use the right drill.

5.3m tinnie. One gets hauled off the beach on to the trailer - so has to lift up and on to the trailer. The other, depending on the tide has to haul my boat up a steep slope on to the trailer - steeper than any boat ramp I have seen. The first one, I have had for about 6 yrs now. No issues. The 2nd one I just fitted this yr. It did fail - turns out one end of the drive bit turns in a bush and the high load chewed the bush out. I fitted a couple of cheap bearings in place of the bush. Working fine.

I am surprised the drills are strong enough - but given the right gearing and grunty drill, it is obviously do-able.  There is an advantage , as stated - with the drill in that if it fails you still have the manual winch. However the 2nd boat which I haul up a steep slope was an absolute pig at times - I couldn't do it in a single go. Too steep, too old.  This $200 winch does it. And the remote function on both winches is worth its weight in gold. I have wired them to the vehicle battery - simple plug in job when the trailer couples. For $200, I would not be without them.

I pulled the 2nd one apart when it failed, looking for the cause. It is strongly constructed. The gears are taking a big load and no issue. Just a bush chewed out. The gear end has a solid bearing. The small bearings I used to replace the bush seem to be working fine.

Alan