Blue water pedigree - many have crossed oceans and circumnavigated. This gives us a warm fuzzy.
Math - If you look PURELY at numbers and ratios (Displacement to Length ratio, Sail Area/Displ. Ratio, Comfort Factor, Velocity Ratio, Roll Acceleration, Roll Period, etc.) and compare them to what many designers consider ideal numbers, the PSC 34/37 is as close to ideal as you can get. More importantly, many blue water cruisers report that they couldn’t be happier with her performance at sea. Bill Crealock, drawing on his cruising experience, reportedly designed the 37 to be his personal ideal blue water cruiser.
Easy(ish) maintenance – Chainplates are externally mounted, the fuel tank can be replaced and inspected easily, removable headliner gives easy access to deck mounted bolts and backing plates, engine access is outstanding.
Traditional styling – It just looks good. I love the look of this boat as it sits at anchor. If it doesn’t tug at your heart strings, keep looking.
Great customer support from the factory (we would find out later).
Small interior – canoe stern and 10’ beam greatly reduce interior space compared to modern beamy boats. Many of the outfitting challenges or trade-offs are directly related to space available. Having a bigger boat would not completely alleviate this, though, as I would just add more stuff and end up with the same problem on a different scale.
One note Marya will make is that it is very easy to take over the boat with stuff when working on projects due to the smaller size. The boat currently has so many boxes, bags, tools, screws, parts and other stuff strewn all over the v-berth, settees, stovetop, countertop, chart table, quarter berth (the garage), anywhere there is a semi-flat surface, that she can no longer sit anywhere. She worries about that when we are living on the boat full time... trying to sleep with coils of electrical wire in the bed and accidentally cooking stainless steel screws. Again a bigger boat probably would not solve that problem but it would allow more surface area to put more of my stuff on. :)
