I echo sentiments here, its not about how an older boat is built but how it has stood up to the test of time. My boat is fiberglass over wood, original build. The layer of fiberglass is very thin. I read here a couple of guys ridiculing fiberglass over wood, especially if the fiberglass is thin. One guy joked some FG looks like it has been painted on, he is describing my boat.
So I was worried about my boat. But realize many here are experts on subjects they really know nothing about. My boat is 50 years old, possibly more. The reason for that thin application of fiberglass was to protect the wood. On my boat this has worked very very well. After reading of many of the problems with glass hulls, I can suggest with more expertise than some, you would be better off with fiberglass over wood, original build.
About that thin application. I was disappointed at first to find out about the thickness of the glass. Here's the thing, if the glass had been added to a depth that made me happy, the express cruiser wouldn't be so express. The boat would have been ridiculously heavy.
Has the glass over wood worked? It has worked extraordinarily well. I gutted the entire insides of my boat (actually my refit guy did), the inside was scrubbed down and one one third repainted in an epoxy coating. Many formal and informal inspections of the hull was made with very little problems. Any problem, small soft spot was where there were through whatevers. My transom was epoxied and reglassed where the leg came through, I was adding a new and smaller in size leg. When the old leg was removed one very small area of softness, this dug out, epoxied, glassed, and new hole cut out.
The hull on my boat didn't have all the glass problems many older boats experienced, for example, no blistering. Blistering doesn't occur when the glass is about an 1/8th of an inch thick.
At the Sidney BC dock show this past summer, a couple were looking at an older Grand Banks 32. The boat had teak decks. I showed them all the round plugs and suggested the best thing they could do was removed the teak (painful to remove beautiful wood), check for soft spots and repair, then paint the whole thing in epoxy and use the sure grip or whatever the buzz words are for paint that is being used now.
If you want idiot proof, check out aluminum boats. Steel begins to rust almost immediately. You just need to look at some of the ugly commercial ships that haven't been maintained to see the results of laziness meets cheapness.
https://www.google.com/search?biw=1...&ved=0ahUKEwi31M_nyuzkAhXOop4KHSAgCZAQ4dUDCAc