It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the three boats you viewed.
Sea Ray 410
https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/1987-sea-ray-410-aft-cabin-8337971/
This was purely to see what a sundeck layout felt like. The condition of the boat is far, far below anything we'd consider cosmetically, looks 10x worse in person, and is most likely the wrong tool for the job in the long term anyway. The good- it's cheap and according to the broker is solid mechanically. It did seem to have enough interior volume to be cozy but comfortable if the interior didn't look like a Motel 6 room at the end of its life cycle. Sight lines were good from the helm, mainly because the boat was short, I'm guessing. The bad- we didn't like how no matter where you were in the boat, there were stairs between you and anywhere else. ER access was another issue. There wasn't any furniture in it at all and when we pulled the boards up to look at the Cats, all I could think about is that any furniture that was there would have to go top side to get any real access to the lumps. Lack of a lower helm, lack of quick access to the deck from the helm, knee-high railings and wet heads rounded out the rest of the dislikes. The main takeaway was that it put the sundeck layout at the very bottom of the floor plan list for us.
GB42
https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/1975-grand-banks-42-classic-8401917/
Not a bad boat at all, at least from what I saw. Definitely more favorable than a sundeck by a HUGE margin. Nice wide walkaround decks, great sight lines from both helm stations, and I was particularly impressed that I could see the bow and both corners of the transom when standing at the bridge helm. The salon was much more open and the ER was quite a bit easier to access, either through the forward stairs or through the sole of the salon. We're both good with crawling around under there, but can see how that'd get harder with age. There are some draw backs to the GBs that we've gleaned just from reading about them, but I'll stick to what we discovered upon viewing. The main was the master suite and the bed layout. We call it the "we'll talk about it in the morning" layout and there isn't any possible way to get a queen in there without completely blocking access to the master head. And forget about a king. It was great to see and it'd be a great deal for someone looking for one.
FWIW, the owner's looking to get rid of it ASAP because he doesn't want to pay for winter storage and the yard wants it out of there yesterday. The broker said, "don't be afraid to insult us with an offer." Take that all for what it is, either truth or the usual sales tactics. But if we were in the market for one, this would be well worth the effort to survey and splash it. It was clean, well maintained from top to bottom and inside and out, and looking at it with the same eye I give to airplanes, it looked like a very, very solid boat to pursue further.
Hatteras 53ED
https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/1984-hatteras-motor-yacht-ed-6758321/
Holy crap, where to begin? Spacious without being sprawling and roomy without being oversized for the sake of bragging rights. Don't get me wrong- it's a big ass boat. But it doesn't feel too big in the sense that it's just excessively gratuitous. If the Sea Ray felt like a camper trailer, and the GB42 felt like a nice RV, then the 53ED felt like a very nice home. I felt like it had better sight lines from both helms than the Sea Ray, but not as good as the GB. TONS of storage space, tons of room for additional cold storage, tons of room for toys and what have you up on the bridge, room for five or six chairs and a nice cocktail table on the rear deck, plenty of room for the dinghy without it being in the way, full size appliances in a nearly full size galley, showers comfortably sized, a generator room bigger than the ER on the GB, easy access with plenty of space to get to various tanks, hoses, pipes, fittings, pumps, ect., stand up engine rooms with room to get around the 8V71's, a salon you could spend all day in gazing out the enormous windows, king size bed in the master. The bench seat up on the foredeck was much nicer than I thought it'd be, and the railings around the walkways was sturdy bordering on beefy and nearly hip height. It felt similar in height to a balcony railing in a house. There really was very little not to like about the boat.
The biggest gripe was access from the swim platform. I see what you all are saying about a cockpit. My question about that is this: Would a swim platform four or five feet wide with stairs running beam-wise down along the transom from the aft deck be a suitable substitute for a cockpit?
Oh, and did I mention it has lots of room?