When world hostilities ceased in 1945, Jock, still very weak from his time in hospital, had returned to Hobart with his young family. It was a gloomy time but he took solace in starting to design a fishing cruiser for a Sydney buyer. The sale fell through when the hull was only partly completed and he sold it to George Gibson, his former mainsheet hand in Kittiwake from cadet-dinghy racing days.
Westward
"You could say that success started right then. Westward was built as a fishing cruiser but she raced with the fishing well sealed over and her propeller removed. I like to remember that she must be the only yacht with a fish-well to win the big race. "She was designed as a fishing/cruiser. That was the important thing to remember. But bear in mind also that the Sydney to Hobart race was run by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, a cruising club, not a racing club." Westward was launched in 1947 and has an overall length of 41 feet 9 inches, a beam of 12 feet and draws 6 feet 6 inches. She was heavily constructed of one and one-eighth inch celery pine planking on laminated blue gum timbers with eight inch centres and had heavy stringers and deck beams. She had a roomy deckhouse which almost entirely covered her self-draining cockpit and the deck was raised for the length of the cabin giving headroom below. Her building virtually marked the start of Muir's Boatyard and her first race the start of Jock Muir's heyday as a blue water ocean racer. Jock classes the 1947 Sydney-Hobart race win in Westward as one of the three greatest thrills of his sailing life. Westward was sold to John Soloman of Victoria and then to Bert Robilliard, also of Victoria. Later, she was sold to Stan Field, then of Melbourne and in August 1965 set off on a 15-year cruise, mainly in the South Pacific, but also visited the Panama Canal. Stan, who is still the owner, now keeps her on the Mary River, Maryborough, Queensland: "Stan has had tens of thousands of miles trouble-free cruising and as I have said, she is still in top condition.