Hi Bruce, I am admittedly a big fan of Art DeFever's designs. The pilot house 49 is a great boat. If you are planning to cross thousands of miles of open ocean there are better designs that are more well suited to that. However if you are planning mostly coastwise cruising with the occasional passage of over 700 miles than the 49 should suit you well. I have several friends who all use their boats for extensive cruising, one couple, Bob and Diane Trunek are currently spending a year or more in Mexico and in the past year they have had their boat from So. Calif. to Alaska and back south to La Paz , Mexico which is the vicinity they are currently in. The have a very nice website you may want to check out which is: http://www.geocities.com/bobtrunek/ They have chronicled their voyages and you will probably find it good reading. There is also a DeFever owners site which you can access, this is located at: defevercruisers.com These boats are very sea worthy boats and Art knows how to design a boat that works, they are generally simple and most have Lehmans for power which makes for easy maintenance and plenty of parts available. Hope this is of some help to you. Mike Schachter Sobre El Mar - 55' DeFever Raised Pilot House Offshore Cruiser