Frankly, I don't think there's gonna be that much to watch, beyond the continued rollouts of another CW "Yacht Style" 60' couples cruiser from a builder like Lyman-Morse, or perhaps more Retro-Style boats from Brooklin Boat Yard... Seems to me that for production boatbuilders to survive in this economy and in the foreseeable future, they've got to concentrate on VALUE more than anything else, and of course whatever is the boat show equivalent of Curb Appeal, the sort of interior that is striking and appealing at first glance... I have a hard time relating to the notion of buying a new boat right now anyway, with so many great used offerings on the market, so I really don't know what drives the market for new boats nowadays, I don't have a clue what those people are thinking... (grin)

To get back to your original thoughts about the sort of Hybrid Cruiser that would make sense for the future, however, I would still look a bit backwards to the vision of Steve Dashew... His boats and design theory, but done on a smaller scale, still make a lot of sense to me... If I were building a boat from scratch, those are the sort of parameters that would drive my thinking. Long, skinny boats, fairly light, easily driven by a smallish rig relative to LOA, lots of machinery and stowage space for cruising gear. I would love to see a builder try to carry that out in something in the 40-45 foot range today, but of course they would never sell, as the accommodation space would shrink to virtually nothing in the eyes of most buyers, especially when viewed in comparison to other boats of similar length... I'm really beginning to wonder whether we'll EVER be able to get beyond the factor that still informs most cruising boat choices - namely, the answer to the question "how many does it sleep?"...

The time would seem to be right now for a return to simplicity in cruising boats, I don't really see that happening, but time will tell... That is the appeal of the daysailers, of course, but I don't view them as "real" cruising boats - they may drive the market for the foreseeable future, but you still won't be seeing anyone spending the winter on them in a place like the Bahamas, for example... Bottom line is, I think the overwhelming percentage of cruisers "out there" will be still be going in used boats, few design breakthroughs there or new styles of cruising driven by design there... The economics just don't support significant numbers of people buying new boats to go off cruising in these days, New Boats are now for sitting in marinas or on moorings 5 days a week while their owners who are lucky enough to have a job work to pay for them... (grin)