Corey - lest you feel you are a voice crying in the wilderness!
It's sad how less interesting boats have become over the past couple of decades. I wonder if it's because new boats are well beyond the pocket of normal, working-class people? This, in conjunction with the fashion for ever-larger boats (and the effective discrimination against small boats, where everything is charged by length, rather than area required/displacement) means that only the wealthy have any influence on new boat design. Almost by definition, these people have very little experience: they have decided to take up 'yachting' on a bit of a whim, rather than buying a new boat as a logical move to 'upgrade' after owning several other boats. Now that boats are treated more like motor cars - a depreciating asset - rather than like a house - an appreciating asset, reflecting improvements made to a long-lived product, no-one would regard it as an act of anything other than financial folly, to buy a brand-new boat from a Boat Show.
However, it's very sad to see all the interesting, characterful little boats replaced by bland mega-yachts, trumpeting en suites and microwave as standard as being desirable attributes for a sea-going vessel. At least browsing through the photos of members' boats on this website restores one's faith in human nature!