Rob (Berthos) is right, and I would like to add a couple things.

1. When you are sailing in unprotected coastal ocean waters, the biggest problem is not the "open ocean" part. It is getting out through the surf and getting back to the beach. The surf zone is where you find the most potential danger and damage. So you need a boat designed for surf and shaped to slide up onto the sand without the bows digging into it and rugged enough to handle the abuse of running up onto beaches. Once you get past the surf, the ocean surface itself usually has relatively flat water, with long swells, except where you have a current or tide opposing the wind, as in the Gulf Stream or at the mouths of rivers or inlets or off the tips of capes.

2. When sailing off an unprotected coast, it is generally safest to do it with an onshore wind so that if you have a problem, you will wash back to shore rather than getting blown out to sea. However, an onshore wind usually means bigger surf.

3. If you were thinking in terms of the Northern Coast of the United States along the Great Lakes, like where you are in Michigan, that is a whole different scenario. Offshore coastal sailing on the Great Lakes in a breeze often requires you to contend with a steep, vicious chop that can beat a boat to death, and you don't have the sloping sand beaches you find along the Atlantic coast. A boat that is bigger, longer, heavier -- to punch through the chop -- is usually better. I know nothing about the Pacific coast, but it doesn't sound like that is where you plan to be sailing.

4. And then there are places like the Florida Keys, where you can sail offshore in the Atlantic and not have to contend with surf at all because of the underwater reefs that parallel the shoreline.

So the kind of boat that works best really depends on what coastline you are on.