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Boats are now days a commercial product. They're designed to sell to the largest market and I think the design changes over time go hand in hand with construction methods. Now days the market is going for space, comfort, and to a lesser extent, speed. The seaworthy designs of the past are out of style and the wide, light and complicated are in. There's pluses and minus' to this. Cruising appeals to more people now but finding what some would call a "real,seaworthy" boat is getting difficult. I think the real loss in the high-tech construction and design is the fact that there's so redundancy. There's no room for error. Take the Mumm 36 or any other high tech racing sled. Aspects of them are stronger than anything we've seen. But if something happens that wasn't planned on or calculated in the design phase, then they're so fragile.
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