I've been a Manatee driver for eleven years now. I find the boat easy to operate and clearly a livable choice. We work upstairs and live downstairs. We carry about 250 gallons of diesel and burn under 1.5 GPH at 6.5 kts. . That gives us sufficient range to fuel up at Ocean Petroleum in Brunswick, GA and travel three weeks (or more) to Norfolk where we refuel at Top Rack. These are two of the least expensive places to take on fuel on the entire east coast. (Notice that I didn't say cheapest!) But the point is that we can choose to seek out the less expensive refueling options. We carry almost 300 gallons of water so its pretty easy to live a civilized lifestyle while cruising. While most of the Manatee's out there are single-stateroom models, a handful of them were built as two-stateroom variants. The early boats had 50 HP Perkins 4-108's…too small in my opinion. The vast majority had Volvo's of 90-110 HP depending on the year. Of course, with a production run that ended about 25 years ago, a lot of these boats have been re-powered by now...some more than once. We have over 5400 hours on ours and think that its just getting broken in. Friends have over 13K on theirs. Ralph is right about replacement parts - they are made from Unobtainium and are priced accordingly. We have been living aboard full time since 2006 and were aboard 100-200 nights a year before that. We have traveled from the Key West to Ottawa and Montreal and have done the ICW migration trip eight times so far. Make no mistake about it, the Manatee is not an ocean crossing vessel (unless you load it aboard a ship) but as a coastal and ICW boat it shines. While they aren't for everybody, for us the Manatee was a good choice. Regards, Randy Pickelmann Morning Star lying Clearwater, FL www.CruisingMorningStar.com