By Jim Gravelyn - Edited by Randall Marquis
Once upon a time (in the mid 1950's) there was a boat builder named Joseph McGlasson (he died in 1993) who designed, built and successfully marketed a 24 foot wooden sailboat, the Islander, in Costa Mesa, California. Joseph, perhaps inspired by his own last name, came to ponder the idea of building his boat out of fiberglass instead of wood and in 1961 approached a company named Glas Laminates to help him accomplish this. Glas Laminates was making its money from the sale of shower stalls and portable toilets, but they knew fiberglass, so they took Joseph's sweet little 24 foot sailboat and created a mold from which the first fiberglass Islander 24's were built. The mold carried the lines from the planks used in the wooden boat and those grooves in the fiberglass hull became a signature feature of the Islander 24, and other Islander models later. [Editor's note: Ralph Brown confirms this word-for-word.]
Well, this turned out to be a damned fine boat, and they sold like hotcakes. In fact, they sold as many as they could make, and perhaps the two partners in this collaboration weren't prepared for their success, because in 1962 Glas Laminates and Mr. McGlasson began to go their separate ways, with Glas Laminates changing its name to Columbia Sailboats and introducing the Sparkman & Stephens-designed Columbia 29, and Joseph with his McGlasson Boat Co. adding the Islander 32 to his line. The divorce wasn't amicable, and I don't pretend to know what happened, but if you ever have a chance to see an Islander 24 sitting next to a Columbia 24, Columbia Contender 24, or Columbia Challenger 24, you will see that the hulls are identical except that their (Columbia) versions have the planking lines removed. Perhaps the comparison will make you realize where McGlasson's bitterness came from... he felt that his design was stolen and used to build boats that competed for buyers with his own company. [Editor's note: Ralph Brown confirms this word-for-word.]
Now you know some Columbia history, too.
(As an aside, McGlasson and Columbia were not the only Costa Mesa boat builders using fiberglass - Jensen Marine, with the 'Lapworth designed' Cal 24, was also headquartered locally. I think that's weird. Think about it. It's the early sixties, fiberglass boats are about as common as spinnakers in a hurricane, and three different companies are pumping out fiberglass 24-foot sailboats in the same town! Go figure.) [Editor's note: Ralph Brown says, "Same f**king street!"]
(Oh, guess what else - Westsail started in Costa Mesa, too. In the sixties. Building the first fiberglass heavy-displacement production cruising boat, the Westsail 32. At that point in time, Costa Mesa had to be the fiberglass sailboat capital of the world.)
Anyway, by 1963 the McGlasson Boat Co. was incorporated as Wayfarer Yacht Corporation, with McGlasson still the principal owner and designer. I call him the designer with some hesitation, because that's not exactly how it worked. He took credit for designing the 24 back in the fifties, and the 32 in the sixties, but I've been told that McGlasson pulled a plug from a wooden 'Lapworth designed' 34 that he'd commissioned back in the fifties and that was the source of the fiberglass Islander 32. (This situation differs from the Columbia hijacking of his 24 design, because Lapworth had been paid for his work - he just hasn't been getting the proper credit.) This information makes me wonder whether Lapworth designed the 24 also. [Editor's note: Ralph Brown says no he didn't.]
Moving along with our history lesson, Wayfarer was bought out of Bankruptcy court by Ralph Brown and Ben Kanter in 1963, and in late 1965 we start seeing the company use the name Islander Yachts, with the white swoosh of sail on a black rectangle (and vice versa, too) for a logo. [Editor's note: Ralph Brown had a friend in the marketing department of Airstream Trailers (in Mexico) who moonlighted on the side. This friend did all the advertising design for Islander. Ralph says one of his creations was the logo, "We gave him a boat for his work."]
In 1968 Wayfarer sold Islander Yachts to Cosmodyne Inc., and Islander Yachts Inc. became a subsidiary of a giant conglomerate [sold for over 1 million dollars]. That relationship lasted a mere three years. In 1971, Cosmodyne sold Islander Yachts to Radlon Inc., an even bigger conglomerate, and that's the last ownership change as far as I know.
For those of you interested in minutiae, until 1968 the address was Wayfarer Yacht Corporation, 1682 Placentia Avenue, Costa Mesa, California, 92627, with a phone number of 714-646-7437 or 714-646-7436. Upon purchase by Cosmodyne, the address became Islander Yachts Inc., 777 W. 17th Street, Costa Mesa, California, 92627, telephone uncertain. [Editor's note: Ralph says this was NOT a location change... the production facility was a corner lot, and the address was changed to the other street name. Now we know they were at the corner of 17yh Street and Placentia! And yes, the phone numbers are quite correct!] In 1971, as part of Radlon, the address was still 777 W. 17th Street, but we know the telephone number was 714-646-7434, which is close enough to the phone numbers back in the sixties for me to think that the phones had never changed. By 1974, the address had changed to 1922 Barranca Road, Irvine, California, 92705, with a phone number of 714-549-8526, and we know that production had switched to Irvine also.
As a subsidiary, the company also sold kit versions of Islanders under the name Yachtcraft. Ed Carter, the original owner of a Yachtcraft Islander 37, says that kit boats were generally discontinued models, and constructed in the same place that current models were being constructed and by the same workers. He bought his boat after the 36 had replaced the 37 in the Islander lineup. Since Ed visited his boat daily while the hull was being laid up, he's probably a good source of information about Islander's production facilities.
At some point in the 1970's, Tradewinds Marine, also of Costa Mesa, bought the molds for Bruce King's Islander 55 and produced some boats. One of these beauties - hull #1 in fact - was built for the Beach Boys with a Jacuzzi in the bathtub and an electric piano in the cabin.
Nordic Yachts and the Mariner Yacht Company are two more companies that fit into the picture somewhere, either as producers of Islanders or of boats using Islander molds. (The Nordic 34 supposedly used the Islander 34 molds, while the Islander 48 supposedly began life as the East Coast-built Mariner 47.) And there's a guy who owns a 32 foot sailboat that looks like an Islander, has Islander specifications, came with Islander brochures and Islander manuals, but his title says Iona and his hull number is not an Islander hull number. The answer to that little puzzle is that Iona bought the molds for the I32 MkII, the I24, and the Excalibur, and produced lighter versions with about 30% less fiberglass in the hulls. (In the case of the 24, they extended it into a 25.)
As an example of the confusion generated by ownership changes, my boat, the Islander 37, exists in the Wayfarer-built version, the Islander-built version, and the Yachtcraft version. Add the fact that my title says "Wayfarer Yacht Corporation" with a year of "1969" - one year after Wayfarer sold Islander Yachts to Cosmodyne - and you have more than just a mess... you have an inexplicable mess.
It gets even hazier near the end. In 1984 the production of boats was moved to Costa Rica and bankruptcy followed in 1986. Although I don't know the details of this failure, I do know that it was accompanied by the bankruptcy of more than fifty other boat manufacturers, including venerable sailing names like Cal, Pearson, Gulfstar, Endeavor, Irwin, Morgan, Cape Dory, Bristol, and Tartan, all of whom were whipsawed by the combination of high resin prices and the institution of a 10% Luxury Tax on new boats in 1986.
Many of those other companies remained in business and emerged from bankruptcy, but Islander would never build another boat. During the process of liquidation, Newport Offshore Yachts bought the molds for the I36, the most popular Islander ever produced, and all of the files were bought by Fuqua Industries, Inc., which became Actava Group, Inc., which was merged into Metromedia International Group, Inc., maker of Snapper lawn mowers and Ked shoes, among other things.
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