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Hunters are very comfortable at dock and at a mooring, no doubt. But the knock I have heard against them hasn't to do with the rig, but with the soundness of the hull and the enormous freeboard some models have which *can* make them sail like a shoebox with a wing stuck in the lid. The Hunter 50 aside (which I liked from a design point of view), I find Hunter serves an essentially "light duty, coastal" market, and for that I guess they are as good as anything else.
But I won't even take one into Lake Ontario with 20 knots of wind and a four-foot sea. There's a few Hunter 33s at my club and I can tell just from sailing beside them in even a minor blow that they are too lightly built and have an "unkindly motion" for some conditions...conditions that are to be expected even in the Caribbean.
The newer models might be different: I can't say, because Hunters as sailing boats have never interested me. As pleasant places on which to be served wine and crackers, they are fine.
I have been on Catalina 400s and 42s, and they seem much better made and thought out. But I would consider a Catalina to be in the top tier of coastal boats, rather than in the bottom tier of offshore boats. In that tier I would put some of the Tartans, the Hanse line, the Sagas and the J-Boats, but not all of the Beneteaus and the Dufours, despite their Lloyd's "Ocean" ratings. I've poked around in some of these boats, and I just see too many instances of design and "convenience" trumping the sort of tested layouts that keep people safe in heavy weather.
You have to decide what you value: all the modern conveniences for the 90% of the time you'll be on the hook, scratching yourself in the well-earned tropical warmth, or the slightly less spacious, slightly more Spartan layouts found in offshore boats. The two ideas have a lot of cross-over, and I support the idea of remaking an older boat into something more modern and comfortable (Morgans and Gulfstars and Cal 2-46s seem to be amenable to extensive renovations), but it's really up to you, your wallet and your own sailing abilities. The weather WILL find you, and a stationary target in the form of a boat where the crew can't put to sea (and the boat is a whippy, windcatching cube) is going to be more dangerous in my view than something that's supposed to stay moored in a hurricane or heavy gale.
But all of this is just my opinion. I own a steel cutter-rigged motorsailer now, which is no one's idea of a great sailing boat, but is the choice of quite a few people as an offshore passagemaker.
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