J/Boats’ Jeff Johnstone on Designing Performance Racing Boats (Part 1)

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome back to the Sailfaster podcast where we dive deep into the world of high performance sailing, racing strategies and the sailors who shape the sport. Well today we've got a really special guest, someone whose name is synonymous with performance sailing and innovative yacht design. And that's Jeff Johnstone, president of JBoats, the legendary brand behind some of the most iconic performance sailboats in the world. From the revolutionary J24, which of course changed the game in one design racing, to the innovations of the J99, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9, the J9,

[00:00:40] the J9. The J9, the J9. The J9, the J9, the J9. J9, the J9. J9 and many others. JBoats has been at the forefront of making sailing faster, more fun and accessible to all. Jeff has been with JBoats since 1988, carrying on that Johnson family legacy in yacht design and innovation. And under his leadership, JBoats continues to push boundaries, blending speed, versatility and ease of handling into their designs. Today in the first part of our discussion with Jeff, we're going to dive into the JBoats design process, performance

[00:01:10] sailing trends, and what's next for one of the most respected names in the industry. Next time in part two, Jeff's going to talk about how to maximize the performance of your J-boat. So here we go with part one. Jeff, great to see you. Thank you for joining SailFaster today. Thanks, Pete. It's my pleasure.

[00:01:39] You know, I did mention to a few people, I know that you'd be on the pod, and I had a stream of questions, and most of them were highly technical. Maybe we'll get to some of them, and you answered some of them, actually, in our really interesting chat we had over the phone a few days ago. But really, I want to spend as much time as we can on the J-boats design thinking and the process of how you go from concept to launch and so on, and then also your thoughts on getting

[00:02:08] the most out of J-boats. I mean, you're obviously a really top racer, so for me, it's getting your thoughts on how to get the most out of a J-boat of any type. From a racing perspective. But let's start from the beginning. So, Jeff, what was it like growing up in the Johnson household from a sailing perspective? It was, we had a gaggle of kids. We had five to seven kids at any given moment in the house.

[00:02:35] I was the oldest, or still am. So, it was really at an early age that, age five, I started crewing for my dad and penguins, frostbiting, freezing my butt off, and not really enjoying sailing much at all. But then it was in the summer. We were a member of a local club in Stonington, Connecticut. And so, we all learned how to swim and row a dire dow and tie a bowline at early ages. But I spent most of my time crewing for my dad very early on.

[00:03:04] Then we sailed, my dad sailed lightnings, but I grew up sailing, crewing for him on a Falcon. And then when I became a teenager, it was lasers, 420s, and then finally doing a whole campaign one summer in a 470 when I was 13. And that was the following year that my dad decided to build a boat in the garage so the whole family could come,

[00:03:32] not just he and I traveling around while everyone else stayed home. And that boat was famously, became a J-24? It was. Initially, it was just the 24-footer that Rod was building in the garage that he would convince his kids to go help sand the bottom after dinner most nights. And it took two years to build. It was launched in May of 76, and I was 15 at the time, 16 at the time.

[00:04:03] And so, dad, mom, and all the kids, we raced that boat all summer, sailing against much more experienced crew. We raced on much bigger boats, but we did well. We won a bunch of races, and at the end of the season, at that point, it was just the Johnstone 24 because every garage-built boat was named after its designer. And that fall, people started to ask my dad if they could have one just like it.

[00:04:28] And then all of a sudden, it occurred to him that maybe he should start a business. Did he build the second one in the garage, do you remember? Or did he immediately sort of go out to local boatyards? Actually, the first one, no, never built the second one in the garage. But the first one actually ended up on the rocks in Stonington, Connecticut in a storm late that fall.

[00:04:56] And actually, it had to be lifted off the rocks, put on a truck, and then taken to Warren, Rhode Island, or Fall River, to be turned into a plug for then the eventual mold for the first J24s. And so my dad had a choice.

[00:05:15] Everett Pearson, who was the builder for many, many years, gave my dad a choice to either have the original ragtime reconditioned and spruced up or to have a brand new hull number eight. And my dad picked a brand new hull number eight that we then sailed the next year at Block Island Race Week in 77. When did the J24s first become sort of a viable class?

[00:05:43] How long after that? The boats, there were a lot of boats that were in demand in 77. And I would say it was the Morsi Internationals in Annapolis in 1977 that really put the class on the map from a handicap standpoint, because Morsi was the big rule under the time. And which is why the J24 at the time had a big boat layout.

[00:06:09] Most of us slept on the boat at regattas, because that's just what you did in the late 70s. Everyone slept on their 20 to 30 foot keelboats. And what it was Morsi Internationals, I think 12 of the top 14 boats in one division were J24s. But the first big event was the Midwinners in Key West in 78. That really put it on the map. Great history. I love that.

[00:06:36] So, I mean, you've obviously been an active racer for a long time. Do you have a favorite J-boat to race on? And I'm guessing if you do, it's probably changed over time as each new boat got developed. Just wondering. Well, I like your question. A question I get a lot is, what's your favorite J-boat? My normal answer is the one I just most recently sailed, which in this case was the little J7 day sailor that we launched last month in very close temperatures.

[00:07:06] But I would have to say it's from our One Design fleets. The J24 over all the years of racing in J24. I mean, with these experiences racing the different boats, it's about the people as much as the sailing, if not more about the people. So, I really enjoyed One Design J24 sailing for many years. J22 Midwinners, I did several.

[00:07:33] J80 Worlds, several in the late, like 08, 09, 10. J111 class is just phenomenal. That's as pure of a race boat as we've ever done. And yet, there are people that just cruise and day sail it. The owner communities and class associations, those have been really key to the success of J-boats, I would guess.

[00:08:02] And you've always been personally very active in that area, right? Yeah, I'd say it's sort of ingrown to, I mean, that's just part of how we grew up as sailors. My dad and uncle were very active in One Design classes, whether it's lightning or sailing or 470. So, we really come from a One Design background.

[00:08:28] And at an early age, the very first J24 North Americans was here in Newport in 78. And I remember helping my dad out with my two brothers. And we were hoisting each other up every single mass to measure the force day length and check the lifeline sag. And so, we were recruited very early on for measuring. And that just really just became a natural.

[00:08:59] It's sort of, if you think of it, it's the opposite of a car salesman who is afraid of all the customers talking to each other and comparing all the complaints. With us, we've always wanted to get all the owners together because that's where the magic is, is having people of similar boats get together. And it doesn't have to be a race. It could just be a cruise or pop the hoods open and compare features. Yeah, it's a great community for exactly that.

[00:09:28] I part owned a J80 and I fully own a J105, so I can attest to how that works. This is a really busy time for J-boats right now. You've launched the J7 and the J9, and I read the reviews, rave reviews of both those boats. And you had the J45 a couple of years ago. It's busy times, right, for the boatyard? It's particularly busy of late, I agree. And some of it just happens to be falling all at once.

[00:09:55] But no, it's been, I think, since the last three or four years, sailing has actually benefited from people looking for recreation closer to home, looking for more family activities. And, you know, the same as people taking up hiking and biking and diving, sailing really actually benefited from the pandemic. You and I had this really interesting conversation a couple of days ago, or at least I found it interesting, about design.

[00:10:22] And you mentioned how the U.S. sailboat market is split into multiple segments, obviously. But you were talking about between 30 and 50 foot length. Every five foot in that range represents quite a different market. Could you explain that? Yeah. And it's not exactly five feet, but it's approximately five feet.

[00:10:43] And historically, if you're looking at a mid-30s, like a 35 or 36 foot racer cruiser or cruising boat, you're normally looking at an accommodation plan that would have a single head and two sleeping cabins plus the main cabin. And it's not until you get to about 40 feet that you can have two heads and two cabins, at least in our boats.

[00:11:10] And that is not typically until you get to 45 feet that you have two heads and three cabins. And so there are there's a certain increment where you can add that next accommodation feature. You just don't see three cabins, three heads and 40 feet. And typically, five foot increments is a huge price difference as well.

[00:11:36] The budget for a 45 footer is more than twice the budget of a 35 footer. So people are usually looking, often they're working within a budget, but very often now, I think, as people are considering a new boat, they're considering whether they're going around the world, what their use is, but also how much they can handle.

[00:11:59] And so at any given in a racer cruiser market, you're looking at really five different models between 30 and 50 feet. Most people looking at 36 are not going to be looking at a 40 or 45. What strikes me, Jeff, is how similar the interiors are from 30 foot up for multiple boat builders and designers. It's almost, it's almost, it's sort of almost identical layouts.

[00:12:29] And so it's very convention filled versus perhaps other, you know, other types of designs from other areas. Is that, has anything sort of ever come up in, in, in that sort of design world where you think, oh, that's a completely different way of having an interior layout. I mean, for getting sort of stripped out racing boats and more sort of the racer cruiser sort of area. It's hard to do anything.

[00:12:53] I mean, it's, it's hard to go too far astray unless you significantly increase hull volume. And when you do that, you're now designing the boat around the interior, as opposed to designing a really nice sailing boat. And you put in the best possible interior you can. And the latter has really been our philosophy over time. We've realized that there's been inflation, if you will, volume inflation in the market.

[00:13:19] But today's 45 footer at the Annapolis Boat Show is probably seems like twice the volume of the 45 footers from two, two decades ago. But yeah, there are certain, I think you can get away with a little bit more latitude if you're designing a boat that's designed, you know, for coastal sailing and not going offshore. But if you're going offshore, you're going to want the galley near the companionway. You're going to want the nav station probably forward facing near the companionway.

[00:13:48] You're going to want an aft head so that, you know, you're not pitching in a seaway trying to use the head. You know, there's certain, there's certain things that, that just work. And for us, what we've always kept in mind for offshore cruising is, and performance racing is having great handholds, not having any huge, any wide expanses where you could be tossed across the boat in a seaway below.

[00:14:19] So for the same reason, you might say, well, you can't fit a lot of people walking fore and aft below in our boats. Well, you have a lot of handholds and, and you can feel secure in a seaway, whether you're on deck or below. Yeah, that makes sense. I get that. Could you walk us through what a typical J-boat design process is from, you know, from concept to completion?

[00:14:42] And I'm really interested about how you, how you get feedback at the, at the beginning to try and decide which design to go to or which concept to pick. And also during the design approach itself, the design process itself, whether you go out for feedback from sailors.

[00:14:58] Well, certainly we, we get, get feedback from, from all sorts of areas, but I think the most fundamental or fundamental C, if there is a secret that, that I, I give credit to for a lot of our product development and, and some of our most successful boats is the fact that we are all passionate sailors at the company.

[00:15:24] And so, and so, and we're all typically at different ages and different situations, whether it's young kids, older kids, grandkids, new couples. Yeah, that we, we all grew up as performance sailors. So we have a high standard for how boats should sail. But very often it's what boat would we want personally? Now you can't run a business plan off that, but, but it is a good final check.

[00:15:52] Is this a boat that we would want to actually own ourselves and sail ourselves? And so there's that sort of underlying criteria that it needs to pass that test. But, but then it's, it's really just keeping our eyes and ears open. Sometimes it's a great example of a boat that evolved from one model to the other is the J46 cruising boat that started life as the J44.

[00:16:21] Very successful, still successful. It started out as a client in Nova Scotia who loved the 44, wanted to order a newer one and wanted all the cruising accommodations on it. So wanted a gen set and wanted all sorts of things that the 44 didn't have. And we actually came up with a marketing. We're going to call it the 44C. And then we said, you know what? We're doing so many things. Let's do a new deck.

[00:16:50] Let's extend the transom. And that became the J46, but it started with one client and became a model. So that, that does happen. But in terms of a new market, you know, the J9 and J7 are a great example. We spent the pandemic summer 2020 sailing a J70 off the mooring main and jib only all summer.

[00:17:13] I think I had the Spinnaker up once, but we were taking out family members that didn't know how to, if you can believe it, set a Spinnaker. We do have family members that don't sail. And the, we had such a great time sailing the J70 with just main and jib only that that informed as we went into that fall to talk about the next boat. We said, we're all family sailing again. This is great.

[00:17:38] Let's come up with, you know, new generation J100, if you will, or successful 33 foot day sailor. But let's get it down under 30 feet and with, and improve the cockpit further and just make it a main and jib boat. So that was a direct result of our experience through, through a downturn or the pandemic. So it can be, it can come from anywhere.

[00:18:01] It can be a recession like 1983 that led to the J30 giving birth to the 29. How did the, how did the recession impact? Well, J30 and J36 were the second and third designs in J-boat history and models. And 82, 83 came as a big recession and everything was very, very price sensitive.

[00:18:26] And so the J30 and J30 actually a hull was then used to create the J29 fully stripped out and specifically targeted to win the class A Morsi internationals. Which is limited to 30 feet. I think it came out for a base price of about $25,000 back then.

[00:18:50] The J36 was a tall fractional rig, about 50 boats built, really nice boat, but it also had to be put on a diet because it had a great interior, a lot of woodwork. The result of that was a J35, one of our best boats ever, 300 boats built. And so those were directly impacted by the need to come up with something that met the times. And we've only done that, I was just checking it. We've done 55 different models.

[00:19:20] And of the 55, 14 have been either significant model year upgrades or using the same hull to create like the 30 to the 29 or the 36 to the 35. So sometimes the best thing that can happen is a recession or a huge downturn because then you really have to come up with something that doesn't exist on the secondhand market. Like your J105. That was also a recession.

[00:19:50] Luxury tax got put in and the North American, the U.S. sailboat market was cut by more than 50% in one year on boats over 100 grand. So the prior year, 1989, I think there were maybe 15 or 16 J44s built. And in the luxury tax year, there was one built that went to Australia. So, I mean, it was pretty dramatic.

[00:20:18] So the 105 really required, it had to be about under 100 grand fully equipped because God forbid that anyone would have to pay 10% on the $10 more than 100 grand. I mean, it really, tax policy drove development in a way. And of course, at the time, it only makes sense to come out with a new boat, new design if it's providing something that doesn't exist and offer something.

[00:20:46] And at the time, the J35 was doing wonderfully and a great boat, very mature class, very high end. And it's like today's 111 class. But we did realize that it took eight people to race that boat. And so taking half the crew off was really important. Making sailing more accessible, adding roller furling, retractable bow sprit was a huge part of that as well.

[00:21:10] And so the 91 Annapolis Boat Show was a J105 with a wheel, with a dodger, with roller furling and a retracting sprit. And it's pretty safe to say there's nothing like it on the market. But that's what we had to come up with to handle such a downturn. And of course, that took off more than we ever expected it did. So people talk about the J105 as being slightly sort of underpowered.

[00:21:38] I've heard people say that was because it was sort of designed for San Francisco Bay, where it's perfect. It's perfect for moderate to high wind venues. Is that true? You can actually look back on any of our designs that have the shroud-based inboard, as opposed to all the way out to the rail. And including the 105, it's fully powered up with an overlapping Genoa. J109 is exactly the same.

[00:22:04] And for years, the optimum combination for handicap was sailing with about a one, like a number two, a 140% Genoa. But what's happened, and this is great for the class, the class early on recognized that a roll of furling jib, a main, and one spinnaker was a great way to even out the fleet, minimize sail changes, make it easy to recruit new crew.

[00:22:31] And on a 105, I'm sure you've found this, as long as you have three people on the boat, you could probably bring along three more that are non-sailers and within a day be sailing the boat quite well. Jeff, again, when we talked a couple of days ago, you talked about there's five or six things that make it a j-boat. What are those? There are a couple of things that every j-boat has to have. Number one, the boat has to sail well. We're not doing barges.

[00:23:01] We're not doing heavy displacement. We're not doing one-way downwind boats. We want boats that sail really well on all points of sail, especially upwind. It's got to be a boat that we can imagine owning ourselves or would aspire to own ourselves. So we give it that standard.

[00:23:23] There are some specific things that most people would recognize on the j-boat, and that would be the main sheet controls near the helm. And then more importantly, that the boat can sail well with main only. Our brand new day sailors, the 7 and the 9, are meant to sail main only. And the jib is the turbo sail. So that really underlines the philosophy of an easy handling boat. It's got to pass the family test.

[00:23:52] We sailed at the first J70 midwinters. My dad was driving. That was in 2013. He was 76, 77. The very first event, I think there were four or five skippers over the age of 70 racing what a lot of people perceive as this wild sport boat. Yeah. And it does go really fast. But it's a really stable upwind. People are really shocked when they sail that boat upwind.

[00:24:21] But that was the criteria. That's what I had to live up to. I think you'll also see that our boats don't have as much freeboard, as much waterline beam, as much beam at the transom as you see a lot of the rest of the market. And there's always been a concerted effort with Rod and Al as designers to reduce wetted surface as much as possible.

[00:24:45] Go with the slippery and low-resistant hull as you can so you can have a reasonable sail plan on it. And if you are underpowered or decide to sail with smaller sails, J105, great example, main and small jib in eight knots. I mean, on a boat that was originally designed for 150 Genoa, it still sails pretty well in eight knots with a main and small jib.

[00:25:08] So, yeah, with that, then you get another benefit, which is being able to, when you combine that with adjustable backstay and swept back spreaders, pretty easy tuning system is you can take a main and jib on a boat, sail in six knots of wind, and then depower with the same sails up to 20. So, for us, less sail changes is better. It's easier on the crew.

[00:25:33] So, a whole bunch of, I mean, those are just a few things. Easy handling, controls to the cockpit, easy to single or double hand. We kind of factor all that in because at the end of the day, the value of a boat, the true value is how much you use it. And if it's just one purpose, you're only going to use it for that purpose. So, we want even the race boats, even the high-end race boats, we want to be able to day sail well in the end. I always think they're very aesthetically pleasing, the j-boats.

[00:26:03] And they share those sort of visual characteristics across the range, it seems. And they don't seem to be affected by, you know, fads or outlandish innovation. They seem to be boats that look and feel and sail like they could last, they have big longevity as a viable race boat or cruising boat, which seems to be sort of the hallmarks of the design. Believe me, it's tempting. On the marketing, I'm more on the marketing business side.

[00:26:32] My brother, Al, is our chief designer. But you do see fads come and go, and you do see, and a lot of it is driven by around the world or top-end boats that are designed for very specific conditions. You know, we just can't apply sort of a downwind strategy of a really big, wide platform aft, and then expect that same platform to go upwind in light air, dragging all that hull. So, we...

[00:27:01] Yeah, the bigger O-type boats than that, yeah. Right. I mean, I think the designers here, Rod and Al, would... I mean, designers design, architects do houses. So, doing one boat a year, it sort of feels like we're holding them back on what they really would love to be doing. But at the same time, we benefit because it's one thing to design a boat and just give it to a builder. But we've all seen what happens when a builder takes a design and decides to add a lot more weight to it,

[00:27:30] decides to change things up, and all of a sudden the boat is sitting lower in the water. And the most important, second most important thing is once we've come up with a concept and we're into the execution, is knowing what the laminate's going to weigh, what every component weighs, where it is in the boat, laying it out so the boat sails well-balanced, the rig's in the right spot, keel's in the right spot. And that just takes so much due diligence and thousands of lines on the spreadsheet.

[00:27:57] But it leads to boats that are launching at their target weight, they're performing the way we expect them. And so it's nerve-wracking launching every new boat. We always go through the same pre-state, the jitters before the opening performance. But that's part of the beauty of seeing the design all the way through the execution to the launch is that we can be assured or confident it's going to do what we hope it's going to do. One question that I have about design is about naming.

[00:28:27] And you probably heard this again and again and again. And it was a sort of a dispute on our boat coming back out of a race the other day. And one of my guys said that those were the metric measurement, the J125, J100s, J105, J109. They are metric because they're ASIM boats versus the J35, J29 foot measurement version is symmetric. Is that true?

[00:28:52] Basically, although we've muddied the waters a little bit recently, but the J105 came along. It was so different than the J35. At that point, to name the boat a 34 or 35, anything would have been super confusing. And it was a whole new idea with the Sprit and creating the J105. And so there was a lot of ideas floating around and didn't really want to use a decimal point either.

[00:29:19] We joked about Roman numerals, but thought that might not work. But in the end, it was going metric and going with decimators. So J105 and the J92 were actually developed at the same time. And it was really one pivotal meeting that we decided to go 105, knowing that the J92 was the follow-up. The J92 is ready to tool up at the same time. And that just came later.

[00:29:48] And then the 130 and then the 80 and the 120 and so on. But I would say most recently, when we came out with the new offshore cruiser racer line, the 45 and the 40, we talked long and hard about going back to the feet versus the metric. And we felt that we were very proud of the metric series and the boats. At the same time, we knew that there was a huge part of the market that we're just riding them all off as raceboats.

[00:30:16] And most of the European, although metric system is used across most of Europe, most of the boat builders are using feet and inches. With the J7 and J9, you've gone to meters, not decimeters, but meters. So that's a whole other naming convention. I'm a marketing person too. So I've always found naming one of the most difficult things to manage in any brand or product that I've managed.

[00:30:43] So the 9, for a long time, it was just the 28. I mean, we'd had a J28 cruising boat, which was a great success in the mid-80s and still passionate following. But it just started as a 28. And then the whole philosophy of that boat was main-only sailing, how to simplify sailing as much as possible, but still have it be exhilarating and a great time on the water.

[00:31:10] And so part of that was simplifying every aspect of it. So we said, well, what if we just simplified the name as well? I wonder if it was about simplicity. It totally makes sense from that point of view. Well, that was part one of a really interesting conversation with Jeff Johnston.

[00:31:37] Tune in next time, as they say, to hear Jeff's insights on how to maximize the performance of your J-boat. Thanks for listening and see you on the water.