Islander sailboats: a Southern California builder that changed hands five times before 1986
Islander's story runs through one boatbuilder's fiberglass experiment, a bankruptcy sale, four further changes of ownership, and a rotating cast of outside naval architects, ending in a 1986 closure that scattered most of the company's own records. What survives is less a single continuous design office than a series of distinct eras, each tied to whichever designer and owner happened to be in charge at the time.
Origins and ownership
Joseph McGlasson, a West Coast wooden boat builder, developed an interest in fiberglass production in the late 1950s. In the mid-1950s he had already designed and built a 24-foot wooden sailboat he called the "Catalina Islander," and in 1961 he approached Glas Laminates to help him produce that 24-footer in fiberglass, forming McGlasson Marine Corporation to build it as the Islander 24; mass production began that same year once Glas Laminates came on for full-scale output. In 1962 McGlasson and Glas Laminates parted ways; Glas Laminates renamed itself Columbia Sailboats, whose later Columbia 24 and Contender 24 models share the same hull as McGlasson's original Islander 24.
McGlasson's own corporation went bankrupt; Ralph Brown and Ben Kanter bought it out of bankruptcy in late 1963 and renamed it Wayfarer Yachts. In 1968 Wayfarer sold Islander to Cosmodyne Inc. for over a million dollars; Cosmodyne sold the company to Radlon Inc. in 1971, then took it back when Radlon ran into financial difficulty. Islander was later acquired by Mission Marine and Associates, and Mission Marine's 1979 Chapter 11 bankruptcy brought in Fuqua Industries, which closed Islander in 1986; most of the Costa Mesa, California builder's records were lost or destroyed afterward. Sailing Magazine sums up the name changes plainly: the company began life as McGlasson Boat Company, was later known as Wayfarer Marine, and was firmly established as Islander Yachts by the time Robert Perry's Islander 32 Mark II arrived in 1976. McGlasson himself left after Islander dropped the original Islander 24 line around 1971, moving to Newport, Oregon to open a small shop and retire; he died in the early 1990s. By then the company was already losing track of its own past - in 1971, Chief Engineer Charles Underwood told an Islander 24 owner that Islander had "almost no documentation" of the model, just a single drawing on file, stamped obsolete.
The designers
McGlasson designed the earliest boats himself, including the Islander 24, the Bahama 24, and - during the company's Wayfarer Yachts period - a narrow-beam, long-keel Islander 32 first built in 1963, entirely distinct from the Islander 32 Mark II that came later.
The Islander 36 grew out of the company's best-documented design partnership: president Ken Smith commissioned naval architect Alan Gurney to design the hull and industrial designer Joe Artese to design the deck and interior separately, with Islander's own engineering team merging the two designs for production. Introduced in 1971 as a racer-cruiser under the then-new International Offshore Rule, it stayed in production into the mid-1980s, with total output estimated in the high hundreds and, by one account, roughly a quarter of it sold into the Northern California Bay Area.
Robert Perry became Islander's in-house designer after pitching himself to executives Buster Hammond, Hank McCormick and Bob Babson at the 1973 Long Beach Boat Show. His first paid project was a redesign of naval architect Charlie Davies' Islander 40 Motor Sailor, which Islander marketed as the Freeport 41 - though credit for that redesign is disputed. Perry says he reworked the bow, rig, deck and layout for a modest fee and does not recall Joe Artese being involved; Artese says he was the redesign's original author, was "dumbfounded" to see an Islander ad crediting Perry instead, and sued the company over it, a case dropped only when Islander told the court, on the day of trial, that it had filed for Chapter 11. Per Artese's account, Perry was next asked to design the Islander 28 as a "mini 36" - a boat Perry himself considers one of his best - followed soon after by the Freeport 36. Perry then designed the Islander 32 Mark II, reworked from the 28 with a stiffer hull and a harder turn to the bilge at Islander's request, with about 400 built, plus the Islander 34 and the Islander 26 in smaller numbers.
Robert Finch designed the Islander 30 Mark II, which came into production around January 1970, and its sister the Bahama 30, built on the same hull. Bruce King designed the Islander 37, built at the company's yard from 1966 to 1972, and Doug Peterson designed a later Islander 40, a racer-cruiser introduced in 1979.
Construction through the eras
Early Islander hulls, starting with the Islander 24, were hand-laid-up fiberglass with internal lead ballast. Solid, hand-laid fiberglass hulls with polyester resin and plywood-cored decks became the norm across the range, typically joined with an aluminum toerail running nearly the full length of the deck - a detail Sailing Magazine calls "an Islander trademark." Two real construction breaks stand out: the Finch-designed Islander 30 Mark II became, around January 1970, the first Islander built with an interior fiberglass liner, and the Perry-designed Islander 28, launched in July 1975, was the first developed with modular interior construction, assembled on a fixture outside the hull rather than dropped in as a molded liner. By the 1980s, later boats such as the Islander 34 Mark II had moved to solid fiberglass hulls cored with Divinycell foam.
Lines and generations
The Bahama nameplate wasn't a separate design - it reused Islander's own hulls under a different deck mold. The Bahama 24 shares the Islander 24's hull, and the Bahama 30 shares the Islander 30 Mark II's hull. Model numbers could also span unrelated boats: the "Islander 32" name covers both McGlasson's original 1960s Wayfarer-era design and Perry's unrelated Islander 32 Mark II more than a decade later. The Freeport line grew directly out of the Islander 40 Motor Sailor dispute - about 18 of Davies' center-cockpit ketch were built before the redesign that became the Freeport 41, with Perry's Freeport 36 following soon after the Islander 28. Islander also spun off a separate company, Yacht Craft, in 1969 to sell kit-boat versions of its own discontinued models.
Who Islander is for
Islander suits a buyer drawn to West Coast production sailboats from the 1960s and 70s with genuine design pedigree - Gurney, Perry, Finch, Bruce King and Doug Peterson all passed through the drafting room - who also accepts that the company's paperwork rarely survived its five ownership changes and 1986 closure. What a given hull actually is depends on research and inspection more than on brand continuity, since the same model number sometimes covers two unrelated boats.
