I studied the on-line yacht sales sites for about three years before I got down to the last few boats for the same purpose. *In the end, I decided to go with a production boat rather than a custom build. *The candidates eventually boiled down to PDQ 34 Powercat, Endeavour 44 Trawler Cat, Fontaine Pajot 37 Maryland Trawlercat, and the mono-hulls were Mirage Great Harbor N-37 and GH 37, and 36 Krogen Manatee. *A lot of people ask me how I could have these boats on the same list, but the criteria of:
*shallow draft (38 inches or less), **economy, *stability, *value-holding, **comfort, *and very important to us was to have distinct and separate areas by which to enjoy the water...., fly bridge, pilothouse, boat deck, bow area, veranda, you know....the places you can plop down and be alone or together when one desires to be inside, outside, high, low, screened in, blowing in the wind, whatever.
To various extents, they were all features of these boats. *The cats were all over 200K (some over 300K) and could offer the advantage of roll stability, system redundancy, and the extra speed to the upper teens when necessary. *I also loved mono-hull boats like the Willard 40, Hatteras LRC 42, Monk and DeFeaver designs, but they were just too deep for the type of cruising we wanted to do.
**When it came down to the last three boats, PDQ 34, Endeavour 44, and the 36 Krogen Manatee, I sacrificed the speed of the cats and went with the Krogen, which also ended up being about half the price of the cats. *I loved the PDQ 34, but I'm just too stiff and big to get around in the hulls. *The 44 Endeavour had the full beam forward stateroom and great space, but they just weren't worth twice the price of the Manatee, which cubic-wise, is probably about the same. *
** There's a richness in traditional recreational trawlers, (just take a look at the members album on this site) that was necessarily absent in the cats, outside of the occasional trim piece here and there. *They are too weight sensitive for this kind of feature. *Our '87 Manatee was made when they were still tapping (some say raping) the forests of Indonesia, etc.. *But to step inside is so much of a richness factor over the spartain appearance of the modern cats that, for me, *was liken to the boat having a nautical soul.*
*No matter what you choose, you'll have the good and the not-so-good about any design. *I may still go with the cat one day, but I can assure you that it will be after I figure out a method of bringing more of the trawler richness into that design. *I want to be that practical, but I'm just not. * Best of luck in your search.