Westerly Storm 33 Sailboat Review, Specs, and Listings

Design and Construction

Ed Dubois drew the Storm 33 for Westerly during a long design partnership that ran from 1979 to 2000, and the hull reflects a performance-cruiser brief: very beamy with a tapered wide stern, a dish-shaped bottom that lifts the galley top higher than you might expect, and a fin-keeled or rare bilge-keeled underside. Westerly built it as a tough, no-nonsense boat, and marine surveyor Nick Vass notes that like all Westerly yachts the Storm is well made and strong, resisting interior mouldings in favour of solid hardwood and plywood joinery. The keel support structure was rather more generous than on smaller sisters, and the better headroom in the accommodation allowed for taller and thicker matrix beams — a structural depth that paid dividends in stiffness.

Rig and Handling

The Storm was intended as a performance cruiser with racing abilities for a one-design class, but most were used for fast cruising rather than the circuit. Testers found her an offshore yacht with the ability to take some stick, though she is not great fun in light airs; the displacement of 5,130 kg and 27-foot waterline suggest a boat that prefers a breeze and a sea to work against rather than a calm flat lake. The bilge-keel version is rare, and its splayed keels are great for sailing but put great forces on the hull keel stubs, keel bolts, and hull-to-keel bonding.

Accommodations

Inside, the dish shape of the hull drives a rather high galley top, a quirk of the beamy tapered form rather than a styling choice. Westerly’s usual interior comforts sit within solid joinery of hardwood and plywood, a deliberate turn away from interior mouldings. When the Storm was re-vamped into the Regatta 330 in 1993, Ken Frievokh redid the interior, marking a mid-production refresh rather than a new model line. Early boats tended to list to starboard due to the location of the fuel and water tanks, a balance issue corrected or lived-with as the series matured.

Known Issues

Fin-keel Storms did not suffer from the cracking around transverse floor beams that afflicted the smaller fin-keel Griffon, GK24, GK29, and Merlin, thanks to the more generous support structure. However, cracking to keel support beams has been seen on Storms and Fulmars, so the deeper structure is not immune. On the rare bilge-keel version, the splayed keels can become loose with time if kept on drying moorings, a direct consequence of the splay that aids sailing but loads the hull-to-keel bond. The rudder uses bushes rather than bearings, an owner-reported detail with replacement bushes supplied by John Blount JE & JE Blount Precision Engineers.

Refits and Ownership

The 1993 interior redo by Ken Frievokh accompanied the Storm’s re-badging to Regatta 330, the same year Westerly organised its models into Oceans, Regattas, and Victorias ranges. For an owner, the solid joinery is straightforward to maintain, and the rudder-bush arrangement is a known, sourced item rather than a mystery. The boat’s reputation as a rugged offshore cruiser that lives up to its name carries through both the cruising reality and the period press.

The Verdict

The Storm 33 is a Dubois-designed performance cruiser that found its real life as a fast, sturdy offshore cruiser rather than a racer. Its beamy, dish-shaped hull and generous keel structure give it a robustness that smaller Westerlys lacked, while the solid-joinery interior and 1993 refresh keep it usable. Light-air doldrums and the bilge-keeler’s drying-mooring looseness are the caveats.

Pros