Ram, we saw the boat you are referring to at a boat show in Long Island when it was new. There were two possible layouts for the salon, one had the lower helm and the other had a full head with stall shower - the MOST EXPANSIVE shower and head I've ever seen on a 28 footer! If this is the layout of the boat you're interested in, I'd strongly consider it, because its an excellent pocket cruiser. Of course I'm assuming you are into extended cruising here...
One thing that has always drawn me to the "Mariner" series of Carvers has been their incredibly good living accomodations for a family of 2 adults and up to 2 or 3 kids as mini-liveaboards. My 2896 is literally our second home on the water, and we use it the way you'd use a lakefront cottage, which means a lot of stuff gets stored on that boat that you don't normally see on a boat. Yet our Mariner finds a place to put it all, with a little help from our dockbox...
BTW perhaps you can answer something for me - did Carver actually use the "8" series designation in their internal model names??? I know that boats ending in "0" were the all wood versions (e.g. 2890), if they ended in "5" (as in my old 2895) they were fiberglass hulls, wood bottoms, if they ended in "6" (as in my current 2896) they were all-fiberglass albeit with balsa coring in the hull bottoms, and if they ended in "7" (e.g. 2897) they were the solid-fiberglass versions that started with the 2357 Montego in 1979 and culminated with the 4207/4227 MYs in the late '80s. Did they subsequently go to the "2898" nomenclature??? I've never seen it listed as such in the sales literature...
