[Valiente]

Hell of a boat for a couple, with a very "performance cruiser" hull form. I like the Solent headstay rig...Alex (Giulietta) would enjoy how hard you can likely drive this boat.

You could easily have three crew so you could have double-handed watches. It's also safe to say that you can afford all manner of safety, nav and survival geegaws. The variables are behaviour and skills.

Given that you're likely buying one of the first five hulls of a new line (I noticed they are using sims to illustrate the model), I would also guess that you are no strangers to innovation. I hope for your sakes that the 615 is sea-kindly, because that will have a big impact on how much you enjoy being on passage. I also hope that you can handle tasks like reefing down the sails mechanically if the power-assisted winches fail or the buttons short out. I also hope the main reefing system is simple and not in-mast. My point is that many of the labour-saving devices on today's production boats are potential failure points and are really suitable only for coastal sailing and proximity to repair facilities. Not being able to get the main in during an Atlantic gale is more than inconvenient...it can break gear and lay the boat over. Seventeen feet is a long way to drop across a well-appointed saloon.

I'm not trying to be negative here: Hal Roth sailed a Santa Cruz 50 solo as a racer, and he would have been about 60 at the time. But then he was Hal Roth . Sixty-one feet is a big boat: we stopped at 42 feet not because I couldn't afford or didn't want a bigger boat (a Kanter Atlantic 46 looked particularly nice), but because that's the biggest boat we felt my five-foot-something wife could handle solo in 30 knots, and the smallest boat we thought would work with two adults and a child focusing on independence from shore.

It's safe to say that unless both of you are Brad Liew sized, running this boat if the electrical aids fail will be a challenge. You might wish to specify huge winches and heavier than coastal running gear and just skip the electrical stuff, or at least have a Plan B. Same if you have in-mast furling or some other "convenience". I don't consider such devices appropriate for offshore outside of a racing context, but it's your money.