Funny you should ask. I tend to get paralyzed by analysis, I dig way too deep and get stuck. We had a contract on a boat that I really liked, Queen B. It is a 2009 64 and some lucky owner has her now. I'll tell you about her. She spent most of her life in the Great Lakes area and had both engines rebuilt with less than 200 hours on them. New paint, looked like a boat should look. I call then the poor man's Fleming. Anyway, on the sea trial the flybridge chairs shook badly, and she sounded like a WWII PT Boat as I think the exhaust needed rebuild. Very loud, so much so you could not sit at the back table and enjoy the ride. The engine room, although it has over 100k spent on the rebuilds was a bit shabby to me. Original tanks, etc. But all of those little things could have been addressed.
On to Gary Oviatt. I started digging, and found that there are several brokers who knew these boats well, and were there from the beginning at Oviatt Marine. And lo and behold, I found Gary Oviatt. He was shocked to hear from someone about the Grand Alaskan boats he created, and he was very open to chat. I'm getting older now so some details tend to get fuzzy, but seems he is or was in real estate. And out there is a broker named Yolanda who was extremely knowledgeable and sold a lot of these when she worked with Gary. Seems she may have been involved with Queen B. And there is Judy, who you will also find on Yacht Forums and also TF who was there. And I think that one of my other favorite boats, Outer Reef was founded by people who left Grand Alaskan. I know some of those people were there for sure. Overall, I was told that it really depended on which yard built the boat, and how involved the owner, broker, or owners representative was when it was built. This is probably true about anything. It is amazing how things, even little things get screwed up. For instance, I am going to meet tomorrow morning with the local shop that does our annual on our aircraft to find out HOW THE HELL THEY HOOKED THE SHIP BATTER UP BACKWARDS FRYING SOME SYSTEMS!! Totally inexcusable.
But after that over the top deep dive, I'm with you. I like the Grand Alaskan. They look like boats should look. They are beautiful to my eye and well built in my opinion. The one thing I learned was do a survey after a sea trial if you can. You may find something out that would save you the expense of a full survey.
Oh, one of the stories told by Judy or Yolanda, was that Art Defever was at the yard on one of the first sea trails, and he was surprised at the relative speed of the Grand Alaskan with the 3196TA 660 hp Cats.