First and foremost, sorry to miss the whole progress of this thread but happy to finally see it!
I'd like to quote from Jay Leno for starters : "For
men,
racing is like sex; we all think that we're great at it!" That's what came to my mind at first when I read about the Open60 suggestion. For all the people who suggest that, I need to ask the following questions :
1. Did you start sailing at the age of 5-6 with opti's then move to bigger centerboards and sailed as a professional
racer for your whole life?
2. Have you ever sailed an Open60?
3. Let's forget open60, have you ever sailed a production boat's
race version alone?
4. Ever tried to walk on the
deck while storming at 20 knots in a storm with
wind speeds around 60?
5. Do you suggest F1 cars for daily motoring?
As you can guess, I'm from the side that finds this suggestion crazy. If you're planning to suicide, there're thousands of less scary and less painful ways.
Let me make one thing clear, I've sailed for almost my whole life, 6'4" tall and I can bench my own weight without any problems and I'm 30 at the moment. But when it comes to the real thing, you will be working your ass off -sometimes- 24 hours for almost a year and that calls for every bit of effort to keep things simple.
60-70 foot boats are great, I agree. Best thing is that I can fit inside! But please keep in mind -as an example- a Swan 68's even
single genoa line weights around 70 kg's -DRY!!! And if you're counting on
electrical winches and etc, my tip for you as an
engineer; they break! And they break more frequently than you think!
For production boats, it's obvious that it would be unfeasible for any boatyard to produce a full on south ocean ready
blue water cruiser
racer, since it would drastically increase the production costs for an option 99% of the owners even think of. On the other hand, my
rule of thumb is go for the manufacturers with factories at higher latitudes. If people are ready to pay a 15 year old Swan more than a brand new french production boat, that's because of a reason. My choices would be completely custom, Swan,
Oyster,
Hallberg Rassy and
Najad. Size would be between 45-60 foot, sorry I just feel claustrophobic in 35 footers and I'm ready to do the extra
work to avoid that.
Last but not least, I want to finish with the -almost- proverb that somehow everyone failed to remember : There're no rules above 40, there's no god over 50... Open 60? Yeah, right!!!