J/97 Arrives Rhode Island
USA Debut at Newport Boatshow
The J/97 will make her boatshow debut at the Newport Boat Show on September 17-20. Hull #6 arrived in Bristol, RI and will be launched by September 7th. The J/97 will be available for demos in Newport before and after the Newport Show. If you're interested in taking a tour/demo of the new J/97, please contact J/Boats (phone- 401-846-8410) or a J/Boats dealer.We’re excited to debut the J/95 and J/97 together at the Newport and Annapolis shows. Two new, clearly differentiated, designs with cool design features, high performance, value and the easy handling attributes J Boats are known for.
The J/World Annual Fall Cruise
Southbound from California to Baja and Mexico
Each October and November, J/World heads south for the winter... we go where the sailing is great, off to the warm waters and predictable breezes of Banderas Bay on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. And you are invited to join us for the journey! Come along for one leg, or multiple passages, with our J/World offshore cruising instructor to help show you the ropes. The best way to learn to cruise is by cruising!Our getaway to the cruising grounds, pueblos, and spectacular south-of-the-border cities starts with LEG 1 in San Francisco, and we work our way down the rugged and spectacular northern California coastline. The famous maritime centers of Santa Cruz and Monterey are just a couple of possible ports-of call.
LEG 2, our Southern California leg, begins in the spectacular town of Santa Barbara, and cruises south to San Diego via the unique Santa Catalina Island. Natural beauty and an intriguing history make this a truly special place.
Then the rally begins on LEG 3. In San Diego, we join up with the (in)famous cruiser's rally to Cabo San Lucas, the Baja-Ha-Ha. Some 150+ boats participate in this annual pilgrimage to Mañana-Land.
There are a total of three legs over the period of two weeks, and the sailing is generally great. Add to that a couple of stops in some of the most beautiful bays on the Baja peninsula and the camaraderie of a great fleet, and you have one of the most impressive events we have been a part of!
As if that wasn't enough, we wrap up the annual cruise with LEG 4, a 7 day adventure across the Sea of Cortez. Starting in lovely Cabo San Lucas, the crew will make a couple of stops in Baja, then it is off towards the mainland. Islands, small towns, and quiet bays await, culminating in the arrival at our beautiful winter base in Puerto Vallarta. For more details on each leg, including specific dates and costs.
J/Regatta News
The Sun Never Sets on J's Sailing Worldwide
The summer sailing season is coming to its ultimate conclusion with some significant activity in both Europe and America. For the European J contingent, the J/Cup was held off Torquay, England in gorgeous, very un-England-like weather with sixty-three boats and a J/109 conquered all comers in the Around Tjörn Island Race in Sweden. In America, the Southern California J/105 Championships was a great success and J's also triumped in the Long Point Race Weekend also in California as well as the Ida Lewis Yacht Club Long Distance Race off New England. Read on! More importantly, if you have more J/Regatta News, please email it or upload onto our J/Boats Facebook page! Below are the summaries. Read on! More importantly, if you have more J Regatta News, please email it or upload onto our J/Boats Facebook page! Below are the summaries.
J-Cup/ J/109 UK Nationals
J/109 J-DREAM Wins Again!
(Torquay, England- August 22-23)- After two days and six races in big breeze, the final two races of the 2009 J-Cup, sponsored by Dubarry of Ireland, B&G and North Sails, were hotly fought on Saturday. Most of the 63 boats racing at the event, which was hosted by the Royal Torbay Yacht Club, seemed to enjoy the benign but shifty 8 to 12 knots from the South to South East.After much counting and phoning and haranguing of the Race Committee for the results, the nail-biting finale to the 2009 J/109 UK National Championship saw Kirsty and David Apthorp in J-DREAM crowned with the title on 28 points whilst Brian Moreton and his team on JUKE BOX were forced to settle for the runner-up slot.
Silverware and prizes donated by the numerous generous prize sponsors of the J-Cup were presented to the podium finishers in each class racing at the event, in addition to several special awards.
B&G have sponsored the J-Cup as a principal sponsor for a number of years now and their generosity continues; for IRC1, some extremely valuable Deckman software went to the winner, John Patterson, and the new J/109 UK National Champions Kirsty and David Apthorp and the crew on J-DREAM were given B&G branded Henri Lloyd gilets. B&G affiliate, Lowrance, now produce a combined VHF and GPS (complete with MOB alarm transmitter). This fabulous bit of brand new kit was presented to the bowman of the J/105 JEOPARDY, who had taken an unscheduled swim earlier in the regatta.Dubarry of Ireland also has a long established and extremely valuable sponsorship relationship with the J-Cup and two trophies, fashioned in bronze to represent the iconic Dubarry Ultima Boot, are presented each year, along with numerous valuable product prizes from the Dubarry range.
The Dubarry Boot for Endurance was presented to Mike and Sarah Wallis and their team from the J/109 JAHMALI.
The Dubarry Boot for Outstanding Achievement was presented this year to Brian Moreton and his crew on the J/109 JUKE BOX.
The Elvstrom Trophy for the best newcomer to the J-Cup was presented to Andrew Ashworth and his team on the J/80 JAMMY DODGER. Andrew is by his own definition, relatively new to sportsboat sailing, and this class win at his first J-Cup tops off a very fine season for JAMMY DODGER.
The Musketeer Trophy is a double champagne bucket and is presented to the lowest scoring two boat team (comprising one J/109 and then a second boat from another class) at the event. This year, the bucket and the bubbles were awarded David Richards (J/109 JUMPING JELLYFISH) and Colin Wall (J/97 TRUE LOVE).
And finally… the coveted J-Cup is the trophy... Colin Wall is a stalwart of the J-Cup and has raced at the event in a variety of different J Boat models which have included the J/100, the J/105 and the J/92. Colin has won his class at the J-Cup before but he has never been presented with the J-Cup Trophy. This year, after achieving a perfect 8 out of 8 scoreline, and in recognition of his commitment to the J-Cup cause, Colin Wall and his crew on board the J/97 TRUE LOVE, were deservedly presented with the J-Cup Trophy.Top three by class, were the following:
In IRC Class 1 the J/122 PANACEA sailed by John & Hill Petterson was first, followed by the J/122 JINJA Ian Matthews in second and Jackie Dobson's J/133 JERONIMO in third.
The IRC Class 2 Colin Wall's J/97 TRUE LOVE got the gold with straight bullets and following him in second and third, respectively were Andrew Robets' J/92s JUST IN TIME and William Howard's J/92 WIZARD.
For the J/80 class, the usually competitive group was not to disappoint. Andrew Ashworth won onboard his JAMMY DODGER, but giving them a heck of a run for the money were Peter Wanstall racing JASMINE and Jeremy Round-Smith driving JEZEBEL only four points back and tied, with tie-breaker going to Peter.
The J/105 was essentially dominated by Ron Dorton-Duff steering JAVA, winning again with nearly straight firsts and a thirteen point margin over Richard Watney's JEOPARDY and William Newton's JELLY BABY, second and third, respectively.
The J/109 UK Nationals as mentioned above were won by David & Kirsty Apthorp onboard J-DREAM, capping a wonderful and successful summer sailing season on their well-campainged J/109. Brian Moreton raced JUKE BOX into second, fighting tooth and nail the entire time only to be beaten by one point! Nevertheless, while the two class leaders fought it out for the top honors, Ben Richards and Mike Ewart-Smith hung in there to grab the bronze podium finish with ZELDA. For more regatta info. Photo credits- Tim Wright
J/105 Southern California Championships
TRIPLE PLAY Wins The Crown
(Los Angeles, CA- August 22-23)- The Long Beach Yacht Club hosted the first ever J/105 SoCal Championships this past weekend with nineteen entrants from Santa Barbara to San Diego.In the first annual J/105 Southern California Championship Sunday, co-owners Chuck Driscoll and Tom Hurlburt, San Diego Yacht Club, drove their boat TRIPLE PLAY to first place honors in the event sponsored by Ullman Sails and North Sails.
Expecting typical Long Beach conditions of strong breeze and white caps, the 19 mostly San Diego area teams were greeted with light shifty winds of anywhere between 5-8 knots throughout the weekend… kinda like, well… San Diego!
'We were looking forward to heavy air,' Driscoll said, 'wanting to work on our heavy air sailing. But this was a lot like San Diego, which of course our boat is optimized for.' Of the five races in the regatta, TRIPLE PLAY only had two first-place finishes, getting two fourths and one third-place finish in the last race of the day. But consistency paid off as they picked off competitors one by one, race by race. 'We kept whittling away, whittling away,' Driscoll said, 'getting good starts in each race to keep us in there.'
Posting second place for the regatta was local favorite Gary Mozer, LBYC, and his team onboard CURREN OBSESSION 2. 'This certainly was not normal Long Beach conditions,' Mozer said. 'If it was, we would have had a local advantage. But consistency won and that’s what Triple Play did. 'In our first race Saturday, we went the wrong way and that was the defining moment of the regatta.' Mozer finished eighth in that race. Third place went to Bennet Greenwald, SDYC, and his crew on PERSEVERANCE. 'The wind machine failed to work this weekend,' Greenwald said. But this is a very competitive fleet and it was always close racing. 'There were boats out there always looking for an inch, straining for that perfect set… and today, that was TRIPLE PLAY.'
Praise came from many sailors for the event organizer, Dennis Case, SDYC, who also competed on his J/105, WINGS. 'I think this was a big success,' Case said, 'to get this many boats together from Santa Barbara to San Diego for a regatta… this was quite an accomplishment. Santa Barbara out-of-towners included ROCK'N'ROLLl, SHORT SKIRT and FREE ENTERPRISE. Alex Rasmussen, Tedd White and the rest of the crew on board FREE ENTERPRISE did the best finishing fourth (they recently won the Fiesta Cup in Santa Barbara).
As Dennis from WINGS proclaimed, 'Our plan is to continue the J/105 SoCal Championships annually, to make it a 'must attend' event for our SoCal J/105 fleet. This was our most significant race of the year and because of this success, it certainly gives us bragging rites as the pre-eminent one-design class in SoCal.'
John Bush, Vice Commodore of Long Beach Yacht Club summed up, 'We were very happy to host the first annual J/105 SoCal Championship here and it was great to see so many boats from all up and down the coast participate. We hope to carry on this tradition and look forward to their return in 2010.' For more regatta info.
Ida Lewis Distance Race
J/42 CEOL MOR and J/35 PALADIN Succeed Doublehanded
(Newport, RI- August 22-23)- The end of season long distance race to commemorate the famous lighthouse keeper, Ida Lewis, who became the namesake for the equally renowned Newport yacht club, Ida Lewis YC, was a very fast one indeed for all entrants. While the maxi sleds (all owned of note by ex-J/24 sailors!!) that included Tom Hill's Reichel-Pugh 75 foot TITAN and George David's 90 foot RAMBLER and Irvine Laidlaw's brand spanking new Wally 90 footer HIGHLAND FLING all started to fly around the course in near record time while the rest of the fleet watched the "three musketeers" take off in a cloud of dust and spray. Only one of the "big dogs" managed to get around the track without a mishap, Tom's TITAN- winning overall while George's RAMBLER repaired a running backstay and hung on without dropping it's 120 mast over the side. Only Irvine's HIGHLAND FLING suffered enough of a mishap, tearing all jibs out of its new new carbon luff foil to have to retire, other than look like an awfully expensive 90' Laser cruising around the race course.The J's had a very nice showing in the DoubleHanded Division with the J/35 PALADIN sailed by Robert Fischer and Jason Richter from Setauket YC finishing 2nd overall. They were followed by the J/42 CEOL MOR raced by the able bodied team of Jim Wilson and Brian Klippenstein from NYYC handily getting 3rd in the division.
For PHRF Class 2, the beautiful J/42 TRUE owned and well-campaigned by Howard Hodgson from NYYC and Newport, RI finished third overall in class. For more regatta info.
Catalina Long Point Race Week
J's Clean House With 1-2-3
(Catalina Island, CA- August 20-23)- The theme of this year's event was "Woodstock" to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the good and bad times of 1969 in the history books.For those of you who can remember that far back (includes the Editor, by the way) 1969 was a watershed in world history in more ways than anyone may have imagined back then, or even today. Some of the highlights of that notoriously historical year include, amongst others: in America that was the "Man on the Moon Apollo XI Mission"; Woodstock the bachannalian festival was held in upstate New York; President "I cannot tell a lie" Richard Nixon became President of America; Joe Namath the American football quarterback declared "I can guarantee a victory" and takes the New York Jets to a Super Bowl victory in the last minute; Led Zeppelin releases Led Zep I as the first of the "heavy metal" rockers to make their mark in the music world; not to be outdone, Elvis Presley records and releases the famous "Long Black Limousine" song/album; the Beatles do their last "live" concert on the roof of Apple Records in London, then release the album Abbey Road to critical acclaim; the Boeing 747 and the Anglo/French Concorde supersonic jets make their debuts; Golda Meir become the first female premier of Israel (antedating, of course, the hand-bag swinging Maggie Thatcher in England); the British Hawker Siddeley Harrier "jump jet" becomes a novelty item as it debuts in the Royal Air Force; US college campus radicals SDS-Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen are running amok in Chicago and Harvard University; the Americans call it quits in Vietnam; US Congressman Ted Kennedy (who passed away today) drove off a bridge at Chappaquidick Island, Martha's Vineyard and accidentally killed Mary Jo Kopechne; Charles Manson runs amok in California; Hurricane Camile obliterates Mississippi; Monty Python's Flying Circus debuts on BBC One; ARPANET (aka "the Internet") connects first computers to send "packet-based" messages; and, remarkably Robin Knox-Johnston from England becomes the first person to sail around the world solo without stopping!!
Befitting such extraordinary historical milestones, this year's Long Point Race Week included a race from Newport Beach to Catalina Island, followed by a buoy race on Saturday. However, Sunday's race was cut short after a postponement and finally cancelation with no wind; on Sunday the fleet normally races back to Newport Beach.
The results are as follows: John Schultze's J/109 LINSTAR was first with twelve points, Anthony Wetherbee's J/109 COMMOTION was second tied with seventeen points with Roy Jones' J/133 TANGO who finished third. Just off the pace was Mark Surber's J/125 DERIVATIVE in sixth. For more regatta info.
Sweden's Around Tjörn Island Race
J/109 BLUR Wins 40-foot Class
(Tjorn Island, Sweden- August 22-23)- This year 548 boats entered the 28-mile race race around the island of Tjörn on the west coast of Sweden. It was the 46:th race and as usual there was a great mix of boats ranging from 20' to 100' trying to find the shortest and fastest way through the archipelago.This year the wind picked up during the day, and a number of boats ran aground in some of the narrow passages. Some of them got caught on film, and are now featured on YouTube-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1s4qoYKCqM
Meanwhile Peter Gustafsson and crew on J/109 #326 BLUR stayed out of trouble to win the very competetive 40-foot class, beating the all new FinnFlyer 36 Club and First 35 as well an most of the 40' boats on the water. For more BLUR regatta info. YouTube Video. More Tjorn Regatta Results
J/Community:
What friends, alumni and crew of J/Boats are doing worldwide
* J/Boats Fun, Cool Web Stats- The J/Community is a very active one worldwide. Since January 2009, J/Boats.com has seen 247,000+ visits from 175 countries that speak in 91 languages. Those visitors have seen over 1.36 million pageviews, with an average 5.5 pages viewed per visit and they're spending on average 5 minutes 43 seconds each time reading and viewing the information.Our J/Boats.com visitor/ viewer loyalty is extremely high, over 63,000 visitors go to the site at least once per month and nearly 35,000 visit the J/Boats.com web site once per week! In other words, to use "web statistics" parlance, J/Boats.com is a very "sticky" website--- e.g. people like to visit it, hang around, dream, read, analyze on a weekly basis the particular "J" they're interested in.
The Amazon.com/Alexa.com website rankings are somewhat imperfect, but the relative breakdowns for sailboat builders put J/Boats 3rd overall and in 10th overall for all sailboat related businesses (media, e-commerce, builders)-- and that's out of one hundred million plus active websites worldwide!
* The 2009 SAP 505 Worlds- 98 boats registered to go sail in this year's event hosted by St Francis YC in San Francisco Bay, California. The event has been nothing short of "epic" in terms of breeze, waves and competition. Participating in the event are a number of J owners and friends. Amongst them are former 505 World Champion Ethan Bixby; former Snipe World and Pan Am Champion Augie Diaz; local Newporter and Olympic contender Geoff Ewenson; former intercollegiate champion Macey Nelson; and two fairly well-known J owners-- Phillipe Kahn- a J/100 owner in Santa Cruz- CEO/ founder of FullPower Technologies and Hasso Plattner- a J/125 owner in Bermuda- CEO/Chairman of SAP and also sponsor of the 505 Worlds. For more regatta info. Photo credits- John Navas / Chris Ray / MarineMedia Alliance (Simonson/Lyons). * Match Racing Clinic on J/22s at San Diego YC- Any Southern California sailors (or visitors for that matter) want to go to a match racing clinic at San Diego YC Sept 18-20 and continue further with racing Oct 4th? Please spread the word even if you can't make it. Six J/22's will be provided by SDYC, no need to be on a team. Whit Bachelor will be leading it. For more match race clinic info.
Featured Boat
Stock J/80s are 1-2 at the 2009 J/80 Worlds
“Race-ready” and “fast out-of-the-box” take on a whole new meaning with the J/80. Consider that in this year’s J/80 World Championship in Spain, the 1st and 2nd place teams (out of 132) raced newly built, un-modified charter boats supplied by the local J/Dealer. No time in advance with the boat, no time to even think about changing anything – just add sails and go. The Worlds winners sailed an incredible regatta in dynamic conditions, but isn’t it great to know you can hop aboard a new boat in a competitive class without having to complete a laundry list of items to get up to speed? Several are just completing in Bristol, RI - Base Price- $49,900. Please contact J/Boats or your nearest J dealer for details.About J/Boats
Started in 1977, J/Boats continues to lead the world in designing fun-to-sail, easy-to-handle, performance sailboats that can be enjoyed by a broad spectrum of sailors. The International J/24 has become the most popular recreational offshore keelboat in the world with over 5,400 J/24s cruising the waves. Today, there are 13,000+ J/Boats, ranging from the International J/22 to the J/65 and ranging in style from one-designs to racers, cruisers to daysailers and, of course, the ubiquitous J sprit boats- J/Boats' innovation in 1992 for easy-to-use asymmetric spinnakers and retractable carbon bowsprits (J/80, J/92, J/95, J/105, J/109, J/110, J/120, J/122, J/130, J/133, J/125, J/145, J/160).J/Boats has the best track record in sailing for innovation and design as evidenced by: 11 Sailing World/ Cruising World Boat of the Year Awards in 14 years; 2 SAIL Awards for Industry Leadership; 2 American Sailboat Hall of Fame Designs (J/24 & J/35); and the three largest ISAF International One-Design keelboat classes (J/22, J/24, J/80).
Counting crew, every year there are over 100,000 friends to meet sailing J's, populating the most beautiful sailing harbors in 35+ countries around the world. Sailing is all about friends. Come join us and expand your social network everywhere! For background info.
Given that the weather is always an enormous variable, this year was near perfect for Nova Scotia waters; renowned for fog and light airs most times. The turnout for J's in general was significant, J owners provided strong support for the regatta, two large one-design classes in the J/24 and J/29, and one of the happiest teams to attend were David Murphy's team aboard their J/122 PUGWASH and gorgeous tender TUMBLEHOME. 
Sundelin's in their J/80 in Sweden, one hopes the combined talents leads to a successful outcome. Over five J/100s are expected to race, making for spirited competition in this annual classic in the waters of Blue Hill and Penobscot Bays way, way "downeast" in Maine.