You are pretty much restricted to
water line length for speed while motoring. For me, that's not a problem at all as 5k has been my motoring
cruise speed no matter what boat I've owned. Don't like the iron bastard banging away at high rpm's trying to go faster than that. Suppose if you wanted to push it, you could get 6k without hitting redline on any boat with a waterline length over 25'.
Sailing DDW, you are in similar conditions to motoring but that hasn't hurt the speed of my 25' waterline CCA boat all that much. Averaged 140 mpd on the sail to
Hawaii with relative winds seldom above 8k. That was running wing and wing with the 135%
genoa polled out.
Anytime you can get a bit of heel to the boat, the water line length increases quite a bit which should give you more speed if the
wind cooperates. The 25' waterline length of my boat would indicate a theoretical max speed of 6.7k. Have held a steady speed of 7.2 knots on the calibrated log for over a 1/2 hour. Conditions were perfect with virtually flat seas and a 20k plus wind.
The biggest issue with these old boats for
living aboard more than cruising is their small interiors compared to newer designs. Most new 30' boats will equal the
interior volume of the
Pearson 35. That's not all bad as these old boats have a lot of
storage space that is virtually non existent in the opened up interiors of the latest plastic fantastics. When I left
SF Bay for Kona had the boat loaded with the detritus of 4 years commuting to the boat in Alameda. Left with two spinnakers, four headsails, Bike Friday in its suitcase, spare
Sailomat self steering vane, 14 gallon
fuel tank for the
heater,
Edson diaphragm bilge pump and mount board, a load of tools accumulated working on the boat far from home, etc that have filled up 1/2 a garage bay when off loaded in Kona. Most of this stuff went into the two cavernous
cockpit lockers stored out of the way. So if you want
interior space, you are going to have go up in overall length to get it. Not a big thing given the
price differential between a newer boat and boats of CCA vintage. Of course the
marinas will get you for every nickel those extra feet can generate. Wasn't a big thing for me as the marina I was in had slip classifications in 5' increments so I paid the same
price as a 30' boat for my 35' boat. That is until they measured the boat and found it was actually pushing 38' with the
self steering vane and
anchor platform and forced a move to a 35'-40' slip.
Another issue with boats with long overhangs is hobby horsing beating into a
head sea. Personally haven't found this to be a problem though it may effect maximum speed. The boat doesn't hobby horse like our old W32 which would virtually cease all forward speed in a chop in light air hard on the wind. The Pearson soldiers on with the bow rising to each wave. But hell, I'm a cruiser and try and not go hard on the wind if there is any way to avoid it. A benefit is reserve buoyancy that will keep the bow or stern from burying itself in a wave making for a drier ride and possibly safer in survival conditions running before the wind.
Biggest complaint is the
galley area in the old CCA designs. Because of the huge cockpits, mine is nearly 7', not counting the lazarette, which limits the
cabin length. The typical galleys are L shaped affairs with the limited counter space that that engenders. Miss the U shaped
galley of our Westsail that allowed for an overhead cabinet and was nearly ideal.