you can look at my profile and take this all with a grain of
salt ...
but I think the Tayanas have a lot going for them. In the 37, for example, depending on the layout (and it varies a fair amount), there can be quite a lot of room down below.
I have a couple of thoughts about Beneteaus, having sailed on a couple and looked at many more. And, I'm generalizing here ...
As relatively fast coastal cruisers or to pop down to the
Caribbean, you'd be hard-pressed to beat the Beneteaus, however ...
aside from their seakeeping abilities, which I have only second-hand info on (I've only sailed them in more-or-less ideal conditions), the interiors don't seem built all that well. This goes for their more upscale bretheren, the Jenneaus, too. The cabinetry fit is often pretty slap-dash and I just hate the ubiquitous headliners. In nearly every older Beneteau,
deck leaks (usually under the
genoa tracks), have brought down the
headliner inside. I have looked at probably a dozen older (10+ years) Beneteaus while out boat
shopping with friends. I could almost lay
money on this
deck leak/headliner problem before I set foot on the boat. That goes for a lot of other similarly designed boats, mind you. The good news, however, is that problem in theory should be fairly easy to fix.
(as compared to a major drawback on the Tayanas: as the infamous
teak deck problem, which is a costly and time consuming fix!)
and there's not much
storage on the Benes compared to say the Tayana especially, or the Irwins (which, admittedly, I know much less about) . If you're going to do some serious cruising, you'll want all the storage you can get. I also suspect that, fully loaded, the Beneteaus probably lose a lot of their inherent speed advantage vis-a-vis the others mentioned.
By contrast, the Tayana has a rock-solid waterline. When the
water tank is empty, for example, I can fill the 90 gallons (that's 720 lbs of water!) and the bootstripe barely moves. And, of course, the Tayana's ability to handle the rough stuff is legend.