I have been noticing at the boat ramp some peoples trailer winch strap & hook comes of the top of the winch drum gear, and others come from the bottom. Which is the correct way? Does it matter? Can you change it from bottom to top or top to bottom? This may be a dumb question, but I think mine may line up better if I could move the boat hook strap to come off the top of the winch gear drum. Currently my strap comes off the bottom and makes a sharp upward angle to hook to the boat bow eye. Hope this makes sense. Thanks.

My strap is over and security hook (is that what it’s called?) is under. Just seems like it works better that way.

Ya, my strap goes over with the security hook under as well...that's how all our boats (going back to the two Dad had back when I was a teen) have been.

What truly matters is that the strap is under the roller as to ensure that the bow eye is held in place properly.

That being said, most trailers are designed in a manner where the strap coming off the top of the drum would give the best angle/positioning to achieve the above, the best. Not sure I have ever seen a trailer with a winch stand that is designed as such that the strap coming off the bottom of the drum would be all that logical...

There may be no other form of manufacturing in the nation with sloppier quality control than the boat trailer industry though, trailers in general really, competition so fierce they have the profit margins down to hardly anything, leads to a lot of improperly set up trailers and most marina's are barely a notch above the manufacturers in common sense and quality control themselves... Then you take into account more than half the folks buying the boats don't know any better, leads to a lot of what you have mentioned above, trailer setups all over the map...

As for the strap base, mine comes off the top of the wench drum and the wench handle turns from top to bottom away from me standing in front of the trailer to tighten. I have seen wench stands that hook to the trailer with springs and the boat bow eye on those goes over the top of the roller on the stand compressing the spring. I also have a secondary trailer mounted ratchet strap that attaches to the bow eye once loaded. It’s all a nice piece of mind because I’ve never seen any wench strap hold when in any kind of accident.

If anyone runs into this down the line, I was able to unroll the winch strap and re-roll it up and now the strap comes off the top of the winch drum. I guess at least on mine, it really doesn't matter. The safety anti rollback feature still works the same. I feel coming off the top of the winch drum lines up to more of a straight line to the boat hookup eye without rubbing on any part. I guess the guys that set it up had it on the bottom and maybe thought that was correct.

I really don’t know if there’s a right or wrong way but coming over the top creates a natural pulley

I think the most important factor here is that you have some sort of safety strap or chain in case the winch one breaks. I've seen boats end up on the concrete access because they slid off the trailer before. Then you have a much bigger problem. Use the safety chain/strap every single time.