wrote:
Happy New Year to you also.

With all due respect, I think you are putting too much
emphasis on a single metric of suitability. Focus more
on the overall boat and its reputation in my opinion.
Catalina makes pretty good coastal cruisers, built to
a price, and well supported by the manufacturer. They
have never had a reputation as world/offshore cruisers
however.

Sorry if my post made it look like I was asking people
to compare the two boats based on their GZ curves alone.
If that was the case the Catalina would beat the Tayana
Vancouver 460 hands down :-)

Other factors that we've been considering include:

1. Tayana has only built 7 Vancouver 460 so this boat
still doesn't have a lot of reputation. In fact I haven't
been able to find any independent review of this boat
on the web.

2. Catalina 470 and Catalina Morgan are built at the old
Morgan factory in Florida. Do you think they're built
more like a Catalina or a Morgan ?

Here a link to Jonh Neal's web site with a list of
boats he considers to be suitable for going offshore
(posted by Evan Gatehouse in January 2004):

http://www.mahina.com/cruise.html#boats4cruising

You'll see Morgan 382 and 383 on the list. Some people
said that Tayanas are not included because they're too
slow and have high CG's.

3. The Tayana's GZ curve is based on the assumption that
the pilothouse would not be watertight. Evan said that
with this fact in mind I should feel better about this boat.
With storm shutters placed over the pilothouse windows
do you think it's going to be unlikely that the windows
will break in the event of a capsize ? And what about the
companionway door and hatch ?

I'm sure some people are still thinking that I shouldn't be
comparing these boats because they're totally different
but what I would like to get is a boat for under $400,000
with 3 staterooms, 2 or 3 heads and a collision bulkhead
and there aren't a lot to choose from.