Design
Nobody does it better (really)
With great performance and a comfortable as well as practical interior, the new J/45 offers sparkling cruising performance as well – should you so wish – as giving you a genuine shot at the racing silverware Above:
Mention the phrase “performance cruiser” to a racing sailor and you’re likely to elicit a grimace or at best a wry smile. The truth is that many boats marketed as performance cruisers actually offer the worst, not the best, of both worlds. There are of course notable exceptions like the J/112e which, in addition to being an excellent all-round cruising boat, has also notched up remarkable racing results in recent years including wins at both the IRC European Championships and the IRC/ORC Worlds. Now there’s a brand new next-generation performance cruiser from J-Boats that’s nine feet longer, even faster and optimised for blue water cruising. Enter the J/45. J-Boats have a unique, well defined and carefully calibrated design DNA so it’s hardly surprising that their idea of a performance cruiser is quite different from most others in that market segment. Like its race- oriented siblings but unlike nearly all of its direct rivals, the J/45 has a balanced hull shape with a relatively deep canoe body, moderate beam, slender aft quarters by today’s standards, notably low freeboard and an elegant sweep of positive sheer. Rather than relying on form stability
80 SEAHORSE
it has a bit more ballast – 4.2 tons on a 7ft fin – and instead of twin rudders there’s a single rudder blade with a very high aspect ratio, like a TP52. In a nutshell it has a more classic and less fashionable hull shape than any other performance cruiser on the market, and that's deliberate. As Coco Chanel once said (though admittedly not about boats), fashions fade but style remains.
Here’s the thinking behind the design: rather than adapt a typical offshore racing hull that’s optimised for power reaching in medium to strong winds (with performance trade-offs in lighter breezes and on other points of sail), J-Boats have gone for an all-rounder that performs consistently well in all wind and sea conditions and at all apparent wind angles. Instead of a boat that sails most efficiently at a steep angle of heel, they’ve produced one that’s easily driven at any heel angle, with a very low centre of gravity. It won’t be quite as fast on a spinnaker reach in optimal conditions as a beamier hull form with a flat bottom and powerful aft sections, but it will be able to sail deeper angles downwind with an asymmetric kite. It will also be significantly faster (and more
J-Boats are challenging the typical notion of a performance cruiser with their new
J/45. Witness the moderate, well-balanced hull form with its deep canoe body, low freeboard and relatively low-volume aft quarters. The result is a versatile all-rounder with good load-carrying ability that is consistently fast in all
wind and sea conditions and on all points of sail
comfortable) to windward, especially in a short chop, with a very narrow tacking angle and it’s likely to be a lot quicker in lighter airs on any point of sail. Sea trials on the prototype J/45 bear this out, with boatspeed matching the true wind speed from five knots up to eight knots – the conditions that are a typical performance cruiser’s Achilles’ heel. Light-wind performance is more important for cruisers than it is for racers because nearly all cruising sailors do 90 per cent of their sailing in wind speeds from five to 15 knots. When it blows harder than that, they tend to stay in port. That said, heavy weather handling is obviously also crucial for any oceangoing yacht and the J/45’s low freeboard, high ballast, excellent weight distribution and very low centre of gravity deliver a definite advantage. J-Boats are also renowned for their ability to carry full sail past 20kts, well beyond the point when most other yachts need to reef.
Load-carrying ability is another key performance parameter for cruising yachts. A racer just needs to perform well at its light ship displacement with a bit of leeway for the weight of the crew, their kitbags
ILP VISION
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