Fast, Sleek, Graceful Under Sail … it Must be a Westerly.
Westerly Marine, Santa Ana, California
Westerly Marine is a custom builder of high performance, advanced composite, racing and cruising boats. Meticulous attention to detail in all areas of construction and dedication to making every boat strong, light and of the highest quality assures total customer satisfaction.
Founded in 1970 by owners Lynn Bowser and Steve Lee, Westerly caters to the serious racer and performance cruiser, both power and sail. The company’s work, aside from providing breathtaking handling and performance, has won numerous awards, including accolades such as, Yachting Magazine editors’ quip, “The exemplary expression of the collaborative art and science which is boat building.”
Westerly specializes in carbon fiber composite, and is one of a select group of boat builders worldwide that has the experience and capabilities to build complete, pre-preg, oven-cured boats. In fact, the company claims the first pre-preg Kevlar® boat constructed on the West Coast. Typically, each hull, deck and structural component is laminated by hand using pre-preg or wet preg epoxy resin, roller impregnators and employing vacuum bag techniques.
As an industry leader, Westerly Marine keeps abreast of developments and remains on the cutting edge of technology. The company works closely with many of the world’s most prominent naval architects building a variety of different and innovative custom projects. Many of those are cored with Plascore Nomex® honeycomb.
“Plascore is our vendor of preference for aramid fiber Nomex®,” said Steve Lee, VP of Operations” it provides excellent lamination and solid blue water performance. It’s a very workable, lightweight honeycomb core that we use with pre-preg carbon or e-glass laminate cured at elevated temperature under vacuum bag. We have done some wet epoxy laminate structures with Nomex® but our preferred build technology utilizes Nomex® in a pre-preg composite.”
Westerly’s reputation for high-end composites has lead to work in the performance auto racing, international marine and lightweight panel markets.
“We’re able to market our composite capabilities outside of the marine industry,” continues Steve. “We have an ongoing relationship with local theme parks for custom projection panels, again in e-glass pre-preg laminate, but using Plascore aluminum honeycomb. The aluminum core is furnished to our specifications and offers similar strength-to-weight benefits; it’s ideal for that application.”
For more information visit Westerly Marine at www.westerly-marine.com.
