http://www.boatinternational.com | January 2018PHOTOGRAPHY: BILLY BLACK
IT WAS HATE AT FIRST SIGHT FOR MARY
MCCLURG. There was no way she could ever
imagine owning that tall, commercial looking
boat that towered over them from the
neighbouring slip in their marina in Fort
Lauderdale. “I can’t stand it,” she remembers
thinking, staring up at all that bare, unfaired steel.
If she and husband Jack were going to trade up
from their pretty 35 metre Benetti Camarina
Royale, it would be to a classic, elegant Feadship,
or something like it.
But anyway, all the talk of a new boat was just
that... talk. Jack and Mary weren’t planning
to part with their Benetti any time soon. That was
until early February 2016, and a phone call in the
middle of the night: “Sir, ah, the boat’s on fire”.
A generator had overheated as Camarina Royale
was steaming back from the British Virgin
Islands, around 70 miles north-east of Cuba in
about 10,000ft of water. The crew were wellThere were fires and
disagreements to overcome
but they have made Marcato
even more special for Jack and
Mary McClurg, as they tell
Stewart CampbellOn board
with
JACK &
MARY
MCCLURG
drilled and fought the fire, but eventually
abandoned ship into the tender they were towing.
Before doing so they sealed the engine room
and hit the halon, but the fire wouldn’t quit.
Jack and Mary’s Benetti – the first boat they’d
owned – burned to the waterline and sank.
“Thank god everyone was fine,” says Jack. “But it
was pretty dramatic for the crew. Their distress
call was answered by a big propane tanker, which
is kind of ironic.”
The McClurgs had experienced just enough
of superyachting to know that they wanted to get
back in – and quickly. “I thought it was an
opportunity [to buy a new boat] that we wouldn’t
have had otherwise,” says Jack. “It would
probably have taken us a year or two to sell the old
boat and find another one, so an opportunity
came out of what was an unpleasant experience.”
Mary had her eyes on a Feadship, 46.3 metre
Charisma, but Jack wasn’t convinced. “We91