(Newport, RI)- “Having spent a few seasons hanging around with CW’s Boat
of the Year judges, I can’t step aboard a new sailboat without stopping
to measure it up against its design brief. That is the standard that
our team of industry pros uses as they survey a broad range of entries
each year to come up with winning models. And it makes sense, when you
think about it. Each boat is built with a purpose in mind, and the good
ones do their jobs flawlessly, year in and year out.From that point of view, when I stepped aboard the latest addition to what J/Boats calls its Sport Cruising line, I knew exactly what the just-launched J/112E was intended to do: go sailing.
Oh, you could certainly sit in the roomy cockpit and soak up the rays in some sunny anchorage. And at day’s end, you’d find everything you’d need in the well-equipped galley to whip up dinner for friends. With two private cabins, there’s plenty of room for the kids or another couple, and settees on each side of the drop-leaf centerline table in the saloon could be turned into sea berths in a pinch.
But what you’d really want to do, if the J/112E was your boat, is get those sails up and go sailing, no matter the size of your crew — which is just what a few of us did aboard hull Number One, on a late autumn afternoon out on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. The breeze was light as we motored away from the dock, but once out in open water, where we had 10 knots or so to work with, the J/112E sprang to life. Upwind, the speedo read 7.2 knots, nearly matching the wind speed. Later, with the asymmetric kite set on the retractable carbon sprit and a bit more breeze, we were rewarded with a few surges of 9 knots and better. Not bad for a cruising boat!” Read more of Mark Pillsbury’s review on Cruising World
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