Well I am a fan of the AWB and have crossed the Atlantic twice in two. GRP is translucent and you can ALWAYS see daylight through it unless it is painted. Our previous boat fell during a hurricane and two bulkheads were cracked, we were told by the surveryor and repair yard, it didn't matter as they were not structural, the repair was simple. We know of a beautiful looking steel boat that sailed to USA and was hauled for anti-fouling when the owners discovered that they could push a screwdriver through the hull. To their horror they were able to do this all over the hull and ended up abandoning the boat. Crossing the Atlantic downwind we had a 50kt storm for 10 hours our boat handled the 6m waves with no problems and was steered by our windvane steering, we were scared but the boat was fine. Looking around at the cruising boats most are GRP and production built. Bennies were the majority boat in last year's ARC and I believe all of them made it. No boat is bomb proof, even a long keeled, steel one, there are plenty of hulks on reefs everywhere. There was one in Martinique last year that you could see straight through into the heads, by the time they had stripped it back to good steel most of the hull was gone.