Relentless Pursuit of Perfection
The father and son behind Mag Bay Yachts are on a mission to craft the finest sportfishing boats ever built.
By Gary Reich posted on tradeonlytoday.com
July 23, 2026
Hesperia, a city of around 99,000 people, is situated in what people call the “high desert” of California. It’s approximately 3,200 feet above sea level and around an hour and a half drive from the busy San Bernardino Valley of Los Angeles. Joshua trees, cactus and sparse, parched undergrowth surround the place as far as the eye can see, right up to the foothills of the surrounding mountains that bowl up hot air and often swell temperatures past 110 degrees.
Not only are the weather and landscape here inhospitable, but it’s also the last place you’d expect to find a thriving boatbuilding operation. Yet it’s here where father-son team Mike and Barrett Howarth operate Mag Bay Yachts, a builder of high-end center console and express boats. The boats are renowned for their performance and fishability, and are built with a fit-and-finish that pushes beyond traditional perfectionism, taking years of experience to achieve.
“I always liked woodshop, and when I attended Western High School in Anaheim, I won some awards in school competitions,” says Mike Howarth, whose backstory begins all these years after woodshop class in Southern California. “When I was around 17, my father mentioned a boat company in Westminster called Harbor Yachts. They built houseboats, and I started working there for $2 an hour. Six months later, they made me foreman of the woodshop.”
At one point during his time there, the company president left to work for sailboat builder Islander Yachts and asked Mike to go with him. “I left with him, and at that point I’m making big money, $4.50 an hour,” he says with a grin. “They put me in the woodshop. About a month later, they put me in the tooling department with a half-dozen other guys.