Granada sailboats: a Danish cruiser yard that boomed, then broke, in barely fifteen years
Granada Yachts A/S built fiberglass cruising sailboats at the Gesten Glasfiber yard near Kolding, Denmark; archive records place the start of the lineup in 1974. Over the yard's life it turned out boats ranging from roughly 23 to 37 feet, most of them drawn by designer Jan Kjærulff of Elvstrøm & Kjærulff Yachtdesign, before the company was declared bankrupt in 1989. Bådnyt, reviewing the marque's popular Granada 27, summed up the arc as a sailing-boom success wave that broke against the downturn of Denmark's "kartoffelkur" austerity program.
Origins and ownership
The Granada 27, the yard's best-documented model, was built at Gesten Glasfiber under the Granada Yachts A/S brand; a Bådnyt spec table records a run of 500 to 550 hulls between 1976 and 1984. Company records separately show a corporate entity named Granada Yacht A/S, under CVR number 12522878, established in 1988 — a year before the yard's collapse — though the record does not make clear how that filing relates to the boatbuilding activity documented from 1974; the company declared bankrupt in 1989 was recorded under the closely related name Granada Yachts A/S. According to Randers Amtsavis, an electrician who had previously had boats built at Mariager Bådeværft went on to acquire the company Granada Yacht in Kolding while continuing to live in Mariager himself; the newspaper account does not connect that acquisition explicitly to the 1988 filing.
Skifteretten i Holsted, the bankruptcy court, declared Granada Yachts A/S bankrupt in a case reported in a Gesten Sognearkiv newspaper clipping dated 21 June 1989. All 50 employees were dismissed, though a reconstruction of the company was attempted; the yard had suffered million-kroner losses over the eighteen months before the bankruptcy. The aftermath dragged on in the local press: a 1990 clipping in the same archive reports staff waiting three years for their pay, a 1989 clipping records Granada's owner and Sydbank being sued for 7.5 million kroner, and a 1990 clipping describes an unresolved 250,000-kroner dispute between Granada and a company called Qbig, with neither side paying. A 1994 photograph catalogued in the Gesten Sognearkiv places both LM Glasfiber A/S and Granada Yacht A/S at the same Vestre Stationsvej address in Gesten.
The designers
Jan Kjærulff of Elvstrøm & Kjærulff Yachtdesign drew the Granada 27 as the first of a long line of boats for what Bådnyt described as the then-small Gesten Glasfiber yard; the hull grew out of the one-year-older Elvström Kvarttonner (Elvström Quarter Tonner) and was, per the magazine, clearly inspired by that era's hot IOR boats. Model reviews credit the same design bureau for the Granada 30, 31, and 910, and credit Kjærulff individually for the later Granada 32. Elsewhere in the lineup the hand changes: the Granada 24 was designed by Jørn Hansen, the Granada 35 by Kristian Rode, and the Bonita 767 — also sold as the Granada Bonita 767 or Granada 767 Bonita — by Niels Jeppesen.
Construction through the eras
Granada 27s were built with fiberglass hulls and deck hardware bolted through a sandwich laminate cored with foam or balsa, a detail Bådnyt later linked to water-ingress problems around the fittings; interiors were fitted out in teak joinery. Yachtdatabase.com's model reviews document the same balsa-cored sandwich approach on the Granada 24 and 31, describing it as improving cabin insulation and cutting condensation, but warning that once water reaches the core through an unsealed penetration, it eventually rots and becomes expensive or impossible to repair; sandwich-built hulls and decks also appear elsewhere in the lineup, including the 32 and 910, without the core material specified. Keels varied by model: iron on several of the smaller boats, lead on others such as the 30 and 32. The 24 and 31 were also sold for home completion rather than fully built at the yard, which reviewers say left finishing quality varying from boat to boat.
Who Granada is for
Granada suits a buyer drawn to a compact, IOR-influenced Danish family cruiser from the sailing boom of the 1970s and 80s rather than a marque with any ongoing factory behind it — the yard that built them has been gone since 1989. Because a couple of models, the 24 and 31 among them, were built partly by their owners, and because balsa-cored decks recur across the range, it also suits someone prepared to look closely at an individual hull's finishing and core condition rather than trust the badge alone.
