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this is obvioulsy a follow up to an old thread but the thread title is appropriate.
A critical rule when looking at boats is not to paint all of a manufacturers products with the same wide brush... i really dont' care for broad statements like brand X is poorly built, or brand Y is better than Z. always keep an open mind as quality varires from model and year.
recently I looked at smaller Horizon with a friend who is seriously looking for a boat in the 55 to 75' range. At first glance the Horizon was a good candidate and indeed had many nice features including a workable foredeck, ER intakes on the sidedecks, etc... None of us coudl figure out the split galley layout... The real galley on port had almost no counter space... yet the wet bar on stbd, but further aft had plenty of room. not convenient.
ER is very well designed with all systems accessible, a big plus... Crew quarters aft were nice. However, having only 2 staterooms plus what is best describe as single berth in the companionway is a big problem on a 60+ footer...
The killer though, was the number of stress cracks all over the boat. Every step going down to the swim platform had stress cracks, on both sides, and the foredeck was covered with stress cracks. Not gelcoat crazing, but stress cracks, some of them had been drilled to stop them... Very troublesome on such a recent boat.
Again, maybe that particular boat has been abused and may not be representative of Horizon quality but it was not confidence inspiring.
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