So, how hard is close quarter maneuvering with a light weight boat like the GA with a pilot house acting as a sail? I have lots of experience with heavy displacement sail boats but none with this kind of boat. Some of the BLuejacket builders have added thrusters after some close quarter pucker incidents. My, soon to be launched Outer Banks 26 will probably be similar in handling and wonder if I should wake up at 3am to figure it out:).
Yup ... Consider that the #1 contributor to boat's being efficient or not is boat weight (displacement). If you want efficiency, then the first thing you look into is how to build a more optimal structure from a mechanical engineering perspective - which is what I've done on the Great Alaskan. The structure is strong and stiff in exactly the right places for how a boat responds to stress on the water (planing, impact loads when hitting waves, hogging loads when 'balancing' over the top of waves, transom stresses etc). Of course, the second largest contributor to efficiency is the hull form, and third is drag. The GA uses a near-prismatic hull form with an optimized aspect ratio, and a reasonably fine entry - not claiming fame for myself here, but the boat is a success because of the work and studies done by Lindsay Lord and Daniel Savitsky, whom I studied extensively on my own in addition to the Westlawn school studies. The structural details should be attributed to Renn Tolman of Tolman boat fame, and Dave Wright (friend, ex-marine mechanical engineer at Boeing).
In any case, to make a long story short, the Great Alaskan is designed to be efficient so that when the dual-I/O deep V heavies all stay home due to rising gas prices, those of you out there with Great Alaskans will be enjoying time out on the water. The trade-offs include slightly higher windage issues (your question), and less momentum against waves - which means you may need to slow slightly more than the neighboring SeaSport or Orca when the going gets too rough. This is why, especially on the larger / wider versions of the Great Alaskan versus tight slips, the idea of having those jet-type bow thrusters would make sense. Don't buy them if you don't need them, but I've put enough boats into tight slips to know all about the pucker factor concept. I'd love to have bow thrusters on a 30-foot Kodiak. Fortunately, the Great Alaskan already has 6'4" headroom inside the pilot house, so there should be no temptation to increase the ceiling height of the pilot house - which would add more windage to the boat.
Brian