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YACHTS INTERNATIONAL - May 2003
Review by Jamie Welch

Photography by Jerome Kelagopian

And prospered. Today the Pacific Northwest is in some ways the expanded Viareggio of the United States--a megayacht building hub unequaled on the continent. The Jack Sarin-designed, 98' Golden Delicious, which was launched in 1988, was the first to sport a Westport nameplate. For the past 15 years the yard has been improving the formula, growing its workforce and expanding facilities.

The Westport 98 was built at Westport's Hoquiam, Washington yard 20 minutes up the Chehalis River from the original shed. She's the little sister to the Greg Marshall designed 130' and 112', which Westport launched in 2000. After leasing the 50,000-square-foot shed the company hired Phil Beirnes, the previous owner of North-coast--a yard that had commissioned Westport as its hull builder since the 1980s. Beirnes had tired of the bean counting and politicking that shipyard execs are often saddled with, and the people at Westport were savvy enough to take this talented industry veteran and put him to work doing what he likes best--building boats.

In Miami last February, as Beirnes stood on the flybridge of the Westport 98, his matter-of-fact tone didn't diminish from his eyebrow-raising story of how, one year earlier, he was left with an empty boatyard, four primary molds and no workers. "I just had to go make it happen," he says calmly. "I went out and hired a crew and found the right people to do it."

Beirnes brought in some key people from Northcoast and assembled a 58-person workforce that will launch the second 98' this summer. But the way things are going in Hoquiam they might be floating hull number two even sooner.

"What Phil did was astonishing. If you would have told someone a year ago that we were going to have the 98' at a boat show in Miami in 2003 they'd say you were crazy."

There's a philosophy that says if you take away a deadline from someone who truly loves their craft, you will get a perfect product ahead of schedule. The Westport 98 was created in similar fashion. "It wasn't a situation where we told Phil: 'Damn all hours, damn all materials and just get it done,'" Wakefield says. "We were on budget and we make no excuses--the first 98' out of the box will be profitable."