Hi there and welcome to the forum,
I am a Lake Pepin sailor. I don't have much to offer in terms of specific boats that you might want to look at, however I can tell you that we used to own a
Hunter 260 and it's a great boat and would be a good boat for sailing on Lake Pepin. In terms of trailering and moving the boat to other waters, I suspect you will find out what we did, it's really too much of a hassle to derig, trailer and rerig, it sounds fine in theory, however when you have 1 - 2 hours to pack up the boat on the trailer and then 1 - 2 hours to set it up again, it just seems easier to stay put.
The average
depth on Lake Pepin is 30 feet, you can get most anywhere you want with any typical
draft boat of 5 - 6'. The
Minnesota side drops of quite dramatically, so you can sail almost right up to the shoreline, however the bottom on the Wisconsin side tends taper more gradually. Since the average
depth makes this a rather shallow lake, if the
wind is kicking up, you can get a pretty significant chop on the Lake.
There are 3 marinas on Lake Pepin. 2 on the
Minnesota side and 1 on the Wisconsin side. Minnesota has Lake City Marina - this marina is full and you will not likely get a slip here unless you happen to find a boat
for sale that is already at Lake City. The other marina in Minnesota is Hansen's. Hansen's is the lower end of all 3 marinas in my opinion. The marina on the Wisconsin side is Pepin Marina in the town of Pepin. We have our boat docked here and I am partial to Pepin Marina. Great town, resturants and atmosphere here.
Even if you have a trailer boat, you are contracting for a slip for the season, so regardless of whether or not your boat is in the slip, you are likely still paying for it for the season.
Yes, all three marinas have options for trailer
storage and storing the boat on the trailer in the
winter. You may find people who tell you that Pepin Marina doesn't have the facilities to haul boats in and out or provide storage and that was true up until last year when they install a new travelift to be able to now provide these services.