On The Water Duffield 58

It’s not every day that a brand-new 58-foot performance trawler appears on the marketplace radar, but that seems to have happened with the debut of the Duffield 58 Motoryacht.

- Jonathan Cooper

More peculiar still is that this new entry—and you may recognize her name—sporting graceful, downeast lines and a New England navy hull, comes not only from Southern California, but from the same builders of the highly successful, if not ubiquitous, Duffy electric boat. As most waterfront homeowners know, you can’t throw a Titleist very far in Newport Beach, California, or Fort Lauderdale, Florida, without hitting a Duffy or two, such is their penetration into the quiet, clean, leisure pocket-craft market. So when you think of building a 58-foot, 53,000-pound fast trawler on the heels of this business, you’d be hard-pressed to find an analogy that suits. Perhaps if Honda suddenly decided to build limousines? But when you scratch past the surface and dig deeper, there was considerable thought, preparation, and inspiration poured into the design.

Beginnings

Marshall “Duffy” Duffield won’t say so himself, but he’s a bit of a legend in Orange County circles. The boatbuilder, yacht designer, cruising enthusiast, and next mayor of Newport Beach, Duffy’s family has cruised for 25 years on Following Sea, a C. Raymond Hunt-designed/Bertram-built 56-foot motoryacht. The wooden boat has served the family on countless trips to Santa Catalina Island, and, through design tweaks and improvements to make the boat better every season, the decades-long process has provided all the inspiration necessary to conceive of the need for the Duffield 58. Armed with a concept in mind, Duffy made a single phone call to Doug Zurn, the prodigal naval architect responsible for, among other successes, the high-performance MJM Yachts, Marlow Marine, and the sleek and stunning Shelter Island runabout.

Design