Westerly sailboats for sale

Buying a used Westerly: a name that outlasted four different owners

Buying a used Westerly means buying into a name that survived four separate ownership changes and corporate collapses between 1963 and 2000 — from Westerly Marine Construction Ltd through Centreway, a 1990s management buyout, Bowman and finally Marigot — so the actual builder behind a given hull can matter as much as the model name on the transom. What that turnover bought buyers was volume: single models like the Konsort ran to 704 hulls, so parts, documentation and community knowledge are easier to come by than with a boutique yard. Because much of the range also offered twin-keel, bilge-keel versions, keel type is often as big a decision as which specific model to chase: a twin-keel Westerly is built to sit upright when the water leaves it, which matters if a drying or tidal berth is part of the plan.

Which era to target

The construction era matters more than the model name. Hulls from Westerly Marine Construction Ltd's original run — roughly the Centaur's years through the mid-1980s — were individually surveyed and certificated under Lloyds Register, a mark of quality, but they were also laid up in orthophthalic resins that make osmosis a frequently reported issue on boats of that vintage; buyers should budget for a moisture survey rather than treat the Lloyds pedigree as a substitute for one. After the 1993 Victoria Marine merger, Westerly began building boats without the paper Lloyds certificate — a bookkeeping economy, not a construction change, since the yard kept building to the same standard — so its absence on a 1990s hull isn't itself a red flag. The final hulls — built in the closing years under the late-1990s tie-up with the Dutch builder Trintella — came off a different production method entirely, resin-infused with the SCRIMP process rather than hand-laid like nearly everything else the yard built; that's worth knowing if you're looking at one of the last Oceans.

What to inspect across the range

Because so much of the range shares the twin-keel configuration, keel attachment is the single most recurring inspection point: Practical Boat Owner flags the Centaur's keel roots for careful survey, since the engineering tools available when it was designed underestimated the loads on splayed keels, and both the Griffon 26 and the Storm 33 have documented keel-attachment problems of their own — the Griffon's early bilge-keeled boats needed a Westerly-issued reinforcement recall, and Storm 33s kept on drying moorings can develop loose keels over time. Practical Boat Owner's survey of the Konsort also flags chainplates prone to fatigue and corrosion where they pass through the deck (simple enough to replace), deck gelcoat prone to UV crazing, and a headliner problem owners call the "Westerly droop," where the vinyl lining separates from the deckhead.

Navigating the lineup

With more than a dozen hull sizes spanning roughly 22 to 48 feet built across four decades, the practical filter is less the model name than the era and keel type discussed above: earlier, smaller boats suit coastal and drying-mooring sailing, while the larger Ed Dubois-designed cruisers of the 1980s and 1990s were built for more ambitious passage-making. The full model directory on this page breaks the range down by year and length for that comparison.