Early McGruer

Launched in 1946, the first McGruer of her size (42ft/12.8m) after the war, the bermudan sloop Kelana of Clynder was described by Douglas Phillips-Birt in the September 1958 Yachting Monthly as being “the epitome of the conventional British fast cruising yacht of her day”, by which he meant pre-war. For she was a product of and designed in, the late 1930s, when beam was narrower, and draught deeper “with a beam of under 10ft on a waterline of 30ft and a deep draught of almost the maximum allowed by the RORC rule without penalty”. Later McGruers, the most obvious example being the ketch Sule Skerry, would be beamier, lighter and shallower, with a sheer that was adequate but not nearly so outrageous.

Phillips-Birt described her “gracefully drawn-out ends” and her “boldly-sprung sheerline” which harked back to “an older tradition”. All in all, he concluded: “Such then was Kelana, moderate, conventional, handsome, and a yacht that called up admiration wherever she went.”

Broker Mark Cameron writes: “Unlike her metre-rated sisterships, she was built primarily as a fast cruiser with no compromise in design to influence her RORC rating. At the time her builders noted: “In the main it is the fast boats that win rather than those with particularly low ratings. With the McGruer-designed 6-Metre racers dominating events following the war her launch was much anticipated by the yachting press. In the seasons that followed she proved to be every bit as capable as the performance-orientated McGruer designs.”

Owned for longer than he cares to remember by Glasgow lawyer Jamie Grant, she is for sale in good condition by Mark Cameron Yachts.