I think that you have missed my point. I don''t doubt that the Earl and his wife spent 20 years cruising the Pacific and I don''t doubt that they like their boat. Again, I am not equating the Morgan OI series to the plywood boat in my example. The plywood boat example says to me that any individual testimony about a design does not prove anything to {B}me **/B}. So my point is that their experience does not prove to me that Morgan OI''s were ever intended as offshore sailing craft nor that they are my idea of a proper offshore yacht.

As to doing my research, I had the chance to do some this weekend. This weekend I was in a raft up that included two marine surveyors, three current or prior yacht brokers, one yacht repair yard owner, several active and former) yacht delivery skippers and a former IO-36 owner. I was surprised by how many sea miles these folks had spent on IO''s as owners, in charter or in deliveries.

In a number of conversations I asked what was the general ''take'' on the boats. Universally there was not one of these people who classified these as ''offshore boats''. The Surveyors both said that the "fleet of OI''s had not held up well and if they were originally OK for limited offshore work, most of the OI''s that see lately are no longer in a condition to go offshore." They said that these boats have typically been sold cheaply to comparatively inexperienced people trying to save a buck and that as a result deferred basic maintenance have resulted in more serious problems. They descibed the same phenomina that I have speculated that there seemed to be a wide range of build quality over the life of the boat.

I heard the description of a hull/deck joint that had ''unzipped'' in a storm similar to the example that I knew of and a near random and wide spaced bolting pattern similar to the one I knew of.

There was near agreement that the IO41 was pretty much a ''motor sailer'' in terms of sailing ability. There was a general agreement that the boats were miserable in any kind of rough weather. (This from a group that had literally spent 1000''s of miles on these boats.) The prior owner said that he sold his OI and bought a trawler because he "was motoring such a large percent of the time that although he now covers more ground he spends less time motoring than he did in his OI."

But all of that aside, I still come back to the original point of this question, no matter what this august group or the Hinz''s say about the boat, if the boat only has a 105 degrees of positive stability then I know of no classifying agency that would consider this to be and an adequate range of positive stability to be considered a proper offshore boat. Research that! I am open to suggestions here.

Jeff