I loved my 50' single screw Pilothouse, but it was too narrow. The old Meridians (pre-Brunswick) and Trojan Pilothouses (Whittaker), Durbecks, and others made great designs back in the early 70's, but all too narrow now. Made sense back when dockage was cheap and plentiful as a narrower boat needs less horsepower to drive, but in the later years-when much beamier boats were introduced (like the Harry Schoell designs-one in photo above, but he also designed the Trojan Meter series), one could get the same interior volume of a long boat in a shorter one. If you follow yacht designs, you definitely see improvements in interior space and sea-kindliness as time moved forward. A 25' Doral SE for example has as much actual usable cockpit and interior space as a older 40' boat, and are excellent rough water boats to boot. Your not "stuffing" the bow into the waves as you would in a larger boat, you ride up and over them, like a duck. So I like wider, except for THE boats named Wider=ugh. New engine packages make it all possible. First I/Os then IPS and Zeus, and Outboards really free up interior space that used to be taken up by machinery. I had a guy from the Ukraine buy a 4788 from me with the intention of taking it back over there and building something similar out of Aluminum but with IPS drives, shortening the boat, and using the area now engines as another stateroom. He had a heart attack though..so that didn't happen. Great idea though!