A cruiser you can race?

[Jim Cate]

Thunder, your criteria are, to some degree, self contradictory. That is, short mast, shallow draft, good pointing and overall good performance. Not a likely combination IMO.

So, I'd think that you need to prioritize your criteria a bit. Is the low air draft a truly limiting factor? Is there a bridge (or two) that you s imply must get under? Same with draft. Once you set some numbers to those criteria, you can rule out any design that fails the test. Then you get to the performance issue, and here I suggest that you download a set of PHRF ratings. These, while not perfect, give you a fairly objective value for all around performance, and will allow you to compare the speediness of different designs. I thinkk you will find some big differences between some of your examples, for instance The Beneteau 38 rates 102 seconds/mile, the Bene First 40 36 s/m and the Cabo rico 38 177 s/m. This is a huge difference in performance... huge!

So, I reckon that you have a lot of head scratching and re-thinking to do, and that it will be difficult to find a boat that meets all measures, especially when you throw a somewhat limited budget into the mix. When you come up with some specific choices, there are plenty of folks here who will give opinions about them. Some of those may be accurate and useful, some will be ill-educated drivel, but with some luck, you should be able to sort out the difference!

Good luck... I think your goals are reasonable and appropriate... just difficult to attain!

Jim