History

  Around the start of 1963 Commander Denys Rayner, an established yacht designer, was approached by Hilary Scott, a to design a GRP yacht to be built by a new company he wanted set up. Rayner designed “The Westerly” - a 22ft yacht similar in some respects to a wooden yacht he had designed earlier; the boat was subsequently renamed the “Westerly 22”. Together, they founded Westerly Marine Construction Ltd that same years, the first of several companies to own the Westerly brand name. Almost from the beginning, export markets had been important to Westerly. In 1981 the company transferred its assets and was renamed Westerly Yachts, then in 1991 it was sold again and became “Westerly Yacht Construction Limited”. In 1995, Westerly Group was acquired by Tony Davies’s Bowman Group, the parent company of Rival Bowman and Starlight Yachts. Bob Finch was appointed Managing Director. This at last was a change of ownership which appeared to offer some new vigour to the Westerly name. In 1996 the Group announced that new designs were underway, which in 1997 were launched as the Ocean 33 and the Ocean 43; the first all-new models since the Typhoon had been launched in 1990. In July 2000 Gordon Mowat and Jeremy Hood, both Westerly owners based in the USA, trading as Ocean Yacht Sales, bought the moulds, the Westerly name, its logo and trademarks, with a view to manufacturing the larger vessels again. Among the most outstanding models manufactured by Westerly, we find: Westerly, 28, Berwick 31, Conway 36, Gk 24, J 24, J 30, Oceanmaster 48, Renown 31, among others.