Designed and built in 1936 by the Scottish boatyard Fife, Eilean is a ketch which is a sailing craft with two masts: a main mast, and a shorter mizzen mast abaft (rearward) of the main mast, but forward of the rudder post. On 22 October 2009, in a ceremony at the Sezione Velica of the Italian Navy in La Spezia, Eilean was handed over by the Francesco del Carlo boatyard to Officine Panerai, Italian manufacturers of high-end watches, already official sponsor of the Panerai Classic Yachts Challenge.