Reviews / Comments on West Bay Son Ship 54 Pilothouse 2005

Should be similar to the 58 WB. Great design and quality construction.

Can’t offer any specifics on the 54. I’m only somewhat familiar with the 58 owned by a friend. Suggestion for the stats listed in your post. In case you haven’t already, try connecting with the builder. You’ll find contact info on their website (http://west-bay.com). They may be willing to share quantitative data from their records. Otherwise for objective qualitative feedback, you’ll have to hope someone on the forum is a past/present owner of a 54.

Not many 54’s around. They built maybe a handful. Maybe a few more. A 2009 model with a hardtop sold on the brokerage market in July.

The 58’ is West Bay’s best selling model and I think they built close to 100 of them. Many have DD 6V92 power. Some later models have 3406 CATS.

It’s a lot of boat in under 60 feet. The later model CAT powered 58 is hard to beat.

The floorplan I've looked at is a similar version of the 58. Great layout, you lose one pilothouse door and a little room here and there. Speed performance with the larger power option is probably similar to the 58 with Cat 3406's. Hard not to like a West-bay.

While the 58 was designed by a trifecta of Ben Vermuelen (WBS Owner). Howard Apollonio and Glade Johnson, the 54 is the work of well known BC Naval Architect Gregory Marshall in Victoria. He might be a source of info too.

I recently was on a West Bay 58' Very good quality of construction and everything that you need to service was easy to get to. I liked the boat. It did have some gelcoat cracking.

I looked at an older WB 58. Two items I did not like. The electric panel was at the floor level right next to the saloon entrance. Hard to read any labels without sitting on the floor. The other item, a showstopper for me, I'd hit my head every time I stepped down from the pilothouse/galley area into the saloon. Not enough headroom for a tall guy in this transition area. Going up was fine. Guess I lean forward when stepping up/down.

I see that all of the West Bay SS current offerings right down to the smallest (66) are painted. I guess Ben agreed with you on the gelcoat.

Go to gregmarshalldotcom for information and specs on this boat.

looks like gregmarchalldesign dot com might be the place?

Greg Marshall is a disciple of Bill Garden and someone I greatly admire.

I’m a big fan of Greg Marshall as well. Met him while visiting some shipyards in the PacNW many years ago and subsequently at FLIBS. He’s a member of YF.

That is by design, many production boats are designed to accommodate ease of construction not maintenance or replacement of equipment.