I think you're right Tom. I've sailed on quite a few boats in my day and almost always found them lacking in some way. The Shannon has a few thing I would like to have had done differently but taken as a package, I don't believe the they make much of an impact. That's maybe the reason I've had her so long. I told my wife it's going to be a Viking funeral but she said "hell no, you don't get the boat when you're gone!" Once in a while I think back about one of the times I was beating back up the coast of Baja doing the "Baha Bash". We had a double reefed in the main and stay sail and engine running at top cruising speed. We had 30 knots right down the coast with a truly nasty sea and colder then billeybeegeezus. It was just a miserable time to be on the coast. Then my friend tells me to look at the chart plotter. The look ahead line on the plotter just turned around and indicated that we were going backwards over the ground. I stepped out of the pilot house wearing nothing but a T shirt', sweat pants and socks, glanced around and said to my self. "Self, I'm sure glad I'm not behind a cloth dodger" and stepped back inside. Then thinking to myself, "boy, that was really dumb, now I have to change my socks!" Then I walked over and flipped on the switch for the windshield wipers. I have found that Brendon always makes the best out of any situation she finds her self in. Now's when someone says "a bigger boat would have punched through that stuff for a better ride" and maybe he would be right. But then, this is where the trade off aspect of any boat comes in and I'm OK with it.