[Fr. Frank]

As someone born in WPB who fished that area for over 20 years, let me urge you to the 20' for two reasons:

First, if you're planning on taking the family, and you have more than one child of any age, you REALLY need the room.

Second, Palm Beach County has 3 of the 10 most dangerous inlets in the United States. That means every inlet but Lake Worth can be ultra-nasty in the wrong conditions. And even if can be exceptionally rough. If you're taking your family out, the 20' is safer in ultra-nasty conditions.

In 1983, we had a NE winter storm just before Christmas, and I went fishing after work one day because the weather forecast was for the front to hit early in the morning. The forcasters were wrong, and I was offshore of Lost Tree in my 20' Seafari when seas built very quickly from 3'-5', which is my limit, to 8'-12', which is unsafe in a 40' boat. The temperature fell 25* in less than two hours to around 40* by 8:30 p.m. (By 7 a.m. the next morning it was 22*)

I had gone out Jupiter, but decided it was too dangerous to come back in with the NE winds blowing 20-25 kts. And the tide was on the ebb, giving breakers off Jupiter at the bar of about 15'-18'. Despite the short distance, it took me over an hour to get south to Lake Worth Inlet, only to find it looked just as bad. I watched a 50' Ocean run in the inlet and when it was in the trough, all I could see visible above the wave-top was the station on the tuna-tower. I estimated the waves to be breaking at 12'-15' at the mouth of the inlet. Not having enough fuel to sit it out, I ran in the inlet on the back of a wave that was so big it completely blocked my view of the shore and the inlet. Thank God for my SeaCraft and my Mercury inline-6 150hp motor.

The next morning we had ice 2" thick on our low dock. Nasty.

Moral of the story: Get the 20'. Bad weather can come up suddenly, and sometimes there's no replacement for displacement.