Next used boat considering downeast or novi, anyone have .02 on the subject? Makes?

Hi,

There's always a wealth of knowledge here so looking for anyone's 2 cents on the subject.

Over the last 10 years we've gone from day trips in ~25 foot trailer boats to lately we do mostly overnights, sometimes up to 4 days, in 28-35 foot sportfish and downeasts. Basically we chase tuna around and with the fuel and time it ends up making more sense to pack up and stay for awhile in a bigger slower boat.

My trailer boat stays home most of the time now and I'm fishing with friends but it's time for me to take the plunge.

We fish on the anchor most of the time, but do drift, and occasionally troll.

My priorities are something like this, in order:

1. seaworthy enough to handle poor conditions, hard to specify what that means but basically something reasonably capable of handling true steep 8 foot seas on anchor safely and/or without needing to change course if underway - ie much better than the way a 32 foot planing hull handles 8 foot seas

2. efficient, I'd like to see 2 MPG - seems to be attainable from what people claim but maybe some have real world numbers they can share to further prove/refute

3. cruise speed minimum 9 knots, ideally a few faster but could live with that

4. carrying capacity, outside of engine and basic stuff you have in a boat I want 400 miles of fuel (say 300 gallons, 2400 lbs), 1000 lbs of ice, 1000 lbs of gear, 1000 lbs of fresh water, 500 lbs livewell, with the capacity for another 2000 lbs of fish.. 8000 lbs or so there (including fuel). I'd like to be able to carry about that without having the boat burn drastically more fuel, the deck under the water, or other problems as a result

5. space to put all of the above and enough living quarters to sleep 3-4, a head/shower, and basics for cooking, but nothing extraordinary, large deck space to easy fish around

What I'd like to do is buy a fairly well used commercial fishing boat (in the northeast US there are a lot of lobster, gillnet, and other fishing boats of this style available), either in good working order or in need of repower, and go through it cleaning things up and adding a larger pilot house along with the amenities that I want (not a small project but these things I'm very capable of).. Will likely be a 25+ year old rig of some sort, am not looking at anything too recent.

Whatever I get it's gotta be a solid glass hull, I do not want a core of any time below the waterline (be it wood, foam, whatever).

Outside of the above I'm kinda open. My thoughts at the moment are I can get a lot more space (due to the beam), efficiency, and probably general seaworthyness out of a novi, but the cost will be speed.. On the downeast side it's kinda a broad spectrum of boats that are slower and behave more like a novi versus faster and less efficient downeasts. Carrying capacity I know will be more of an issue in some downeasts.

One lure of the slower boats are cost of repower, a small diesel would be more practical to replace some day.

Makes/models I know little about, less novi's out there (seem to see alot of atkinson), but a zillion makes/models of downeasts.

Any comments on the subject?

Thanks in advance.

Jon