J Class
various sizes of boats to the Universal Rule, with a K-Class challenge for the America’s Cup from the Royal London Yacht Club rejected because the boats were too small. The Metre Rules was also around at this time, with the 23 Metre Class very similar in size to the J-Class, and eventually most of the 23 Metres were converted to fi t the J rules. A testament to the beauty, power and reputation of the J is evident in the fact that it is the only class of boat to have had new ones built after it was no longer the vehicle for which the America’s Cup is sailed. Although there is much nostalgia for the 12 Metre, and the occasional talk in the past 20 years about building new ones, none have been built since they ceased to be the Cup boats. The chances that the most
10 cywinter 2011
recent Cup boats, the America’s Cup Class, used from 1992 until 2007, will ever be built again is almost laughable. The revival of the J-Class started with a series of restorations of the three boats that survived the war, Endeavour, Shamrock V and Velsheda. They had all been laid up for more than three decades, and were in a pretty bad state, so bad in fact that the hulk of Endeavour was sold at one stage for just £10. While Shamrock V probably suffered the least neglect, she was sold to Italian yachtsman Piero Scanu in 1962, and was quite well maintained from then on, including a virtual re-build in 1967, it was the spectacular restoration of Endeavour by American yachtswoman Elizabeth Meyer, starting in 1984 that really revived interest in the Js.
Meyer would also become involved in a later refurbishment of Shamrock V, and she really drove the early revival of the class, organizing the fi rst race between two J-Class yachts since before the war, when she got Endeavour and Shamrock racing against each other in 1989, over the old America’s Cup course off Newport, Rhode Island.
At the same time that Elizabeth Meyer started the extravagant restoration of Endeavour, Velsheda was rescued from her mud berth on the River Hamble, though Terry Brabant who bought her did not lavish the same care and expenditure as Meyer. After Brabant’s rather rudimentary refurbishment of Velsheda, and a short career chartering in the Solent, she was again laid up. In 1997 Velsheda was again rescued,
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