Originally Posted by carcrash

When I was looking for a new boat, I went in to talk to Bob Teague. I asked him about a few of the boats we were considering (including Cig and Formula and a couple of west coast custom builders). He said I should not stop looking until I had also checked out Fountains. A couple of his guys also strongly suggested I investigate Fountains.

So I did, and I liked what I discovered. Soon, I had narrowed the search down to a 42 Lightning. Found a great boat, great condition, great price, went down and spent the day checking it out. It was almost perfect, just not enough headroom, not enough open cockpit space, but every boat is a compromise. It was the closest thing we could find to what we wanted. So I brought my wife and the checkbook the next day...
But as we were driving to get there, we both noticed a boat in a broker's lot, a boat I had never seen (that's unusual!). It was a Fountain 32 Sportfish Cruiser. While it was much shorter than we wanted, it had more headroom, and a much much more fun cockpit. "All boats are compromises" but this appeared to be much less of a compromise than the 42 Lightning. We spent a bit more time comparing the two, fell in love with the performance and handling of both, and went with the far more cruisable 32.

We do our boating in the Pacific, and the closest islands are 25 miles offshore, the more interesting ones are over 50. The conditions near our favorite cruising grounds (Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel islands) regularly see over 8 foot seas and gale force winds. So longer is always better. But we also end up spending days on-board, so the better cabin and cockpit really makes the 32 a better boat for us.

I would love to get a bigger boat, but all the new cruiser/fish Fountains are too wide and heavy to trailer. A sportfish cruiser based on a 42 or 47 hull would be great.

But instead, we are planning on building custom next time, since no production builder builds what we really want.