I agree that it is nice to be able to find Racor elements almost anywhere, anytime in North America. They aren’t all that expensive either. They also are pretty easy to change without making a mess, even for me. I can’t make a mess doing almost anything.
I have had Racor 500 or 900 filters on past boats for over 25 years and they are fine. Also adding spin-on's per Tony Athens in one case allowed me to compare directly to the Racors. The spin-on's were much easier to replace m had 5 times less gaskets and issues and also had much more filtration area and ability to hold contaminants before changing. We used about 1,200 gallons of fuel per season over those years and since we did not buy new boats we almost always had a fuel issue to deal with.