(Sydney, Australia)- Every once in awhile, we get reports from J sailors
around the world describing their experiences sailing across the Seven
Seas. In this particular case, a J/97 made its magical way to the
southernmost reaches of the Pacific Ocean and landed in Australia. Even
more remarkable was that a long-time sailor saw the potential that a
fun family cruiser-racer might be able to bring to his friends and
family. Here's the story of how that all happened by Jim Chambers,
proud new owner of the first J/97 in Australia."I had enjoyed 25 years of faithful service from my little 26 footer. It was a boat that was ahead of its time when designed, a forerunner of today's sports boats really, and certainly still punched above its weight even after all those years. Unfortunately, the same could not be said about those of us that sailed her as we seemed to have aged a little less gracefully. I started to think that it would be nice to have a boat that did not try to take control whenever one of the crew needed to move off the weather rail, one that had head room and did not need a 25kg outboard hung off the transom on every outing.
Size was an issue in considering a replacement as I needed to be able to find suitable competition in my home port of Sydney Harbour. My main club, the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club, had a very active division for boats of approximately 30 ft and so that strongly pushed me towards a boat of that size. I had been keeping an eye on the J-Boats displays at the Sydney Boat Show and the J/97 showed promise but I was not going to order a boat without having test sailed one beforehand. Enter my plans with my wife for an extended touring holiday of the UK and Europe, which was well into its organization and planned for the third quarter of 2009. On hearing of our plans one of my crew thoughtfully pointed out that our time in England coincided with the Southampton Boat Show. This introduced a pivotal component to our travel plans.
There were several 30 footers at that show and so I got excellent value from my entrance fee. The folk from Key Yachting knew there was not a sale in it for them, what with me being from Australia and all, but they happily let me crawl all over the J/97 they had on display. They could not give me a sail of the J/97, but made sure I got a go on the J/109 they had on the water, to give me a taste of J-boat sailing. This hands-on sail was critical in my decision-making as I needed to see how the boat behaved under conditions which I knew made my 26 footer behave quite badly. As you would guess, the J/109 was much nicer. I have to say that none of the other exhibitors at the show were as helpful.
On my return to Sydney I still had a short list of possible boats, but Ray and Sandra at Yachtspot picked up the friendly service where Key Yachting had left off and by the end of that year I had placed my order for the first J/97 to come to Australia. The team at Yachtspot prepared her perfectly on arrival and we had her in the water just in time to display at the 2010 Sydney Boat Show. She was named KNOCKABOUT (sorry, not a single "J" in the name).
So, I started racing with the SASC Super 30 division. Racing is around the cans within Sydney Harbour. It is a mixed class division, with about 30 entrants, and contains a bunch of Flying Tiger 10s, some Hick 30s, Farr 30s, Sydney 32s, MASRAM 920s, a selection of sports boats and, what my sailmaker describes as, some 'psycho nutter' boats. Firstly, I have to say that the J/97 is everything I wanted it to be. She is a joy to sail, the control systems are well set up, powerful and easy to use. The helm is direct and we have to be pushing very hard before she shows any antisocial behavior. It is particularly pleasing when the breeze is up and we snug her down and carve through the carnage that generally befalls some of our lighter competitors. Make no mistake, this is a high performance fleet and so every now and then we like to give ourselves a reality check by joining in on the local Greenwich Flying Squadron twilight race. Here we usually beat the best of their 30-35 foot division home by 5 minutes, and have been known to record fastest time when compared to the next division up!
The primary pointscore for the Super 30 division is a PHS system. So, the system penalizes a good result and vice versa. The J/97 almost sails herself to windward and is satisfyingly high and quick. We did, however, have a learning curve to climb in transferring from symmetrical to asymmetrical downwind sailing. Part of this process involved me working out the best spinnaker designs for our style of racing. Once again the Yachtspot crew were more than helpful and we have this pretty much sorted out now and the results are starting to show it. With a happy coincidence of us getting the boat to speed offwind and the right swing of the PHS handicap pendulum we are currently leading this season's pointscore. The really interesting thing that has happened this season is that the division has also introduced a measurement based handicap system to run in parallel with the PHS results. They are using the Australian Measurement System (AMS), which I understand is not dissimilar to IRC. The J/97 absolutely shines under this system. After 5 races we are running equal first under AMS, and that includes the race where a sudden surge in the 15 knot breeze to 30 knots resulted in the little bit at the top of the headsail separating itself from the big bit at the bottom. Not the best result that day.
Our competitiveness under PHS will change with time and results but the AMS is unchanging and we are very competitive. So, all in all, I am a happy little J/97 owner." Enough said. A fun, sexy, little cruiser-racer for the family, even Down Under in Oz!
