Looking for Coastal Cruiser/Floating Condo

Modern boats have a lot of fixed glass and limited ventilation making it impossible to be inside with aircon except in cold weather. For most this means there are very few days a year where an inverter makes sense.

an inverter and inverter can be added fairly easily if you have room

Sounds like a big boat versus small boat thing. Inverting DC to AC for a few outlets, TV and so forth is doable, powering AC loads on a big boat with inverting is sounding like the wrong way. Makes sense. I love learning.

In colder weather it can work on larger boats. I used to run a 70 footer which spent its summer on a mooring in nantucket and I installed a magnum 4k inverter with 16 gold cart batteries. That would power the lights, TVs, a couple of subzero drawers etc for 19 hours before needing 5 hours of gen to charge

As usual it s all about how you use the boat

For sure, I would have a house bank and inverter on a 60 foot boat.

Again it depends on the boat. New boats have no ventilation so even in SoFl winter you need AC

first year I got my old hatt back in 2003, I put 1000 hours on the gen. Then i installed an inverter and 12 golf cart batteries.... second year I cut that down to 200 hours. Between the doors and the side windows even on summer the salon was cool so we only needed AC and gen at night to sleep. 800 hours... 800 gallons at $3 back then and the inverter and bank paid for itself in 18 months without sacrificing comfort.

now in a modern boat... forget it. You need AC even on a 65 deg day so an inverter is useless

Notorious LBB, you both like the OA it seems. gel coat crazing and cracking could be an issue. Around stanchions and cleats are most concerning and a must fix.
Sometimes, and it sounds like OA is one to do this, boats will get a slurry of filler after popping out of the molds to fair the edges and corners and bends. This filler is notorious (see what I did there?) for allowing movement and gel crazing and spidering.
Fixing is either cosmetic and temporary or glassing the areas of concern to make a more reliable fix.
All of this can be done, the key is how much and how long.
If you can get a contract pending acceptable gel coat fix or get a quote or two and adjust the price you may be getting closer.
Pending acceptable gel coat fix will take diligence as you want to be sure a professional is on the job and the color is matched well and blended well and on and on and on.

Are you ready to expand your search radius, there has to be a boat for you and your family, I know you have done FL before and will do it again.

I get it, the logistics of travel and transport is more than I would want to deal with.

Enjoying your search, thanks for sharing.

Better check into what it'll take and cost to reflag a Mexican boat in the U.S.

Gel coat repair and matching is very tricky. I ve seen repairs that look good initially but don’t age well. If the crazing is all over the boat a paint job is much better solution than gelcoat especially if the boat is over 10/12 years old.

Sounds like you have all the bases covered, keep up the good work. Ill

Agreed. Aging repairs show up.

With pictures we could go thumbs up or down more easily, but this is sounding like a big job and $10s of thousands.