Posts: 32799
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Yes you can pull a glass boat up on a sand/gravel beach, especially with a keel guard. If you want roller trailer performance loading and unloading, spray the trailer bunk carpet with silicone lube twice a season, and make REALLY sure you don't unhook the bow eye until you are ready to launch; the boat will literally fall off the trailer.
Fiberglass and aluminum hull strength is very similar. Has to be. It took some pretty interesting engineering over the last three decades for the aluminum big water deep V models to hold up to the abuse the big water guys put them through. The manufacturers got it done.
The big aluminums in a V hull will draft quite a bit more water. In other words, if the landing is shallow, you will ground the boat further from the shoreline.
I launch and load by myself all the time on unimproved landings with a fiberglass boat. Quite a bit depends on the hull design and draft. If you are going to be launching in rivers, shallow landings, and rocky areas, you need a shallow draft boat no matter the hull material. Aluminum would require a modified V or flat bottom. Glass would be a sponsoned V, semi tunnel hull, or hulls designed to draft very little water. The X Series you mentioned is exactly that; I have an X170 and ran a couple X190 models. I live in Northern Wisconsin. Three years on dozens of lakes and rivers, no keel guard, and no problems. About half the lakes I fish have no dock at the landing.
Big rocks jagged enough to damage a glass hull will do similar damage to aluminum, they will scratch and gouge the surface. Any impact done to a glass hull that would damage it badly enough to require repair would damage aluminum equally. If you intend to bounce the hull off rocks with abandon, you will soon damage either material and be repairing either. Cosmetically, glass repairs to new, aluminum repairs and still looks boogered up. It's way easier to match up and repair plain colored gel coat, so don't go polyflake on the running bottom and the area where the hull contacts a dock frequently. Most boat builders offer a color pattern like that.
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