The International J/24 European Championship getting under way this weekend in Howth leads inevitably to thoughts of a special drama afloat two months ago. The crunch finish period of the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race 2022 at Wicklow on Friday, June 24th, was a time of high tension.

Laurent Charmy’s SL Energies Fastwave from France had been the clubhouse leader for most of the afternoon. But in the final counter-tide beat to the finish, offshore tyros Mike and Richie Evans from Howth with their little Snapshot had managed to break away from a group of their closest competitors, and were wriggling along the beach with hyper-short tacks in a sharpening breeze to such good effect that the unthinkable became remotely possible. They might just snatch the lead.

In the end, they missed it by five minutes. But they were soon confirmed as unassailably second. It was a remarkable high seas debut. Yet, in all the excitement of the finish, little was made of surely the most significant aspect of the whole business. SL Energies Fastwave is a J/111, well proven in her short but successful offshore career. As for Snapshot, she’s a J/99, with recognised success in regattas, and now an offshore star as well.

Throughout the Round Ireland fleet – almost entirely in the leading groups – were other boats from the J range, and there isn’t a club fleet in Ireland, and at the main centres all round the Irish Sea, that won’t see this no-nonsense, versatile and effective American-originating marque well represented.

DEFYING ORTHODOXY OF PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

Yet despite the fact that their global commercial success relies on a continuous up-dating of their extensive range to keep their thousands of customers at the front of the fleet, the little boat which started it all, the J/24 of which more than 5,000 were built, continues to be highly popular, defying orthodox concepts of planned obsolescence.

J/24s racing at Howth, where the first boat appeared less than two years after the class’s debut in America. Photo: Annraoi Blaney

She’s a modern classic if you like. But there’s no denying a J/24 is now something of a cult object, not least because they fulfill the American dream in having been created in the designer-builder parents’ garage - so totally garage-bound, in fact, that they’re not the J/25 simply because there wasn’t enough space to build a 25 footer.

The story begins in 1975. Young Rod Johnstone, then an ad salesman for a sailing trade magazine and an active one-design sailor, decided to build a sailboat he had been working on since completing a Westlawn School of Yacht Design correspondence course in the 1960s.

With $400-worth of fibreglass and wood, plus some rigging and hardware left over from a Soling of his brother Bob, he built the 24' LOA x 9' beam sloop – eventually called Ragtime - during weekends in the three-car garage at his family home in Stonington, Connecticut. During the summer of 1976, with an all-family crew aboard, Ragtime beat everything in sight, and he realized he had created something special.

Enter Everett Pearson, the owner of Tillotson Pearson, Inc, a highly respected boat builder in Warren, Rhode Island. He was quite taken with Rod's design and agreed to produce the boat on spec in return for the U.S. building rights. Display ads in the sailing trade magazine got the word out. That winter, they set up a makeshift factory in an old textile mill in nearby Fall River, Massachusetts, and began popping out J/24s.

Enter the marketing experience of brother Bob, a Vice President of Marketing at AMF/Alcort , the makers of Sunfish sailboats at the time. He had seen the potential in the boat Rod had designed. From 1975 to 1977, Bob had helped to take Alcort from the red into the black, and then began trying to convince AMF to start producing a boat similar to the J/24. When AMF didn't jump, in February of 1977 at age 43, Bob did, and threw in his lot with J/Boats.

Signature of approval – Bob Johnstone of J Boats International signs a J/24 rudder in Howth in 2014. Photo: Brian Turvey 

5,400 BUILT

In all, 5,400 J/24s have been built since, plus hundreds and sometimes thousands of other boats to an extensive range of J Boat designs. It has been another case of the phenomenal commercial and creative power of American brothers working together. Think Gougeon Brothers with WEST Epoxy Systems, for instance, a company so successful that when the brothers retired, they handed it over to their employees as a very tangible way of saying thank you for their loyalty and dedication. And think too of Olin and Rod Stephens of designers Sparkman & Stephens. They were very much a team, and it was Rod's skill and ingenuity with rigs and rigging which persuaded the great Carleton Mitchell to transfer his design loyalties from Philip Rhodes to Olin Stephens, resulting in the 38ft Stephens-designed Finisterre which won the biennial Bermuda Race three times on the trot.
So in owning and sailing a J/24, you’re sharing in a sense in the most positive aspects of the American dream. And as it has been found that quality fibreglass just doesn’t wear out, the J/24 offers an inexpensive route into competitive sailing for impecunious young enthusiasts who aren’t afraid of doing their own maintenance work.

PHILIP WATSON SETS OFFSHORE PACE

The J/24 very quickly came to Ireland, and while club and regatta racing and even some cruising was their main purpose in life, sailmaker Philip Watson in 1978 geared up his new J/24 Pathfinder for the ISORA circuit. After the Fastnet storm of 1979 had resulted in more stringent ballast keel requirements, the lightly-ballasted J/24 – which relies on considerable weight effort from her crew of five – was no longer eligible to go offshore, but in that one golden year of 1978, Watson and Pathinder swept all before them, winning their ISORA Class overall.

Pioneering Pathfinder – in 1978, Philip Watson of Howth with Pathfinder showed the way for J/24s – and won his class in that year’s ISORA series

All that is now 44 years ago. Since then, new J Boat designs of almost legendary status have come and gone from the headlines after dominating the sailing scene for a few years and sometimes more. Yet the little old J/24 is still very much with us with thriving national, regional and global associations, and this weekend in Howth they’re in the throes of final stages of preliminaries for the 2022 Europeans with Organising Committee Chairman Richard Kissane and his group ensuring the smooth running of an event which sees final measuring and test sailing over the weekend. The official practice race is on Monday under the direction of Race Officer David Lovegrove, with the Howth machine set in motion to continue the real racing from Tuesday through to Saturday (September 3rd).

Richard Kissane, Chairman of the Organising Committee, has been leading his team in extra preparations, as the J/24 Europeans have not been sailed since 2020, when they were staged in Greece.

KENNY READ COMES TO TOWN

With the appropriately-named Pathfinder taking the first steps back in 1978, Howth has a long association with the class, a notable early participant in a J/24 championship at HYC quite a long time ago being a young American skipper called Kenny Read.

In fact, Howth has acted as a very effective linkpoint over the decades between the European and American J/24 fleets, with the latter keen to sail here after dominating the 2013 Worlds at Howth, when the American overall winner emphasised Irish-American connections, as he was Tim Healy from Newport, RI.

Breezy action – the J/24 Worlds at Howth in 2013, when the overall winner was USA’s Tim Healy from Newport, RI.

Then in 2014, Bob Johnstone himself was in Ireland. Ostensibly, he was on holiday, but as he was the guest of the late Robin Eagleson of Lough Erne, President of the Irish J/24 Class, they made a point of visiting Howth, where Bob obligingly signed the rudder of the J/24 belonging to HYC Hon. Sec. Emmet Dalton – the word is it hasn’t been painted since.

The current Euros are the first since 2020, and there’s interesting American participation in the 35-strong entry entry list, with the furthest-travelled being retired US Navy Admiral Denny Vaughn from Seattle, who is age-defying as he calls his boat Easy Street….

THE ADMIRAL IS CELEBRATED

Admiral Vaughn is having himself a ball in Ireland as he has family links to Donegal, and last weekend during the J/24 Easterns at Howth in the boisterous Saturday night feasting, when the band heard they’d an American Admiral in the party, they trotted out their repertoire of John Denver and Johnny Cash.

As veteran J/24 sailor Flor O’Driscoll of Bray commented: “Only in Howth……”, to which Howth can reply “Only with the J/24s”, for it was in Howth that - at Nobby Reilly’s suggestion and with his energetic backing - the national U25 J/24 programme was instigated to produce some strong nationwide club entries in which young sailors have learned to team together to keep a J/24 in top internationally-competitive trim.

The 2022 campaign is successfully launched – the Headcase crew after winning the class at Kiel Week are (left to right) Ryan Glynn (Ballyholme YC), Sam O’Byrne (Howth YC), Cillian Dickson (HYC & Lough Ree YC), Louis Mulloy (Mayo SC) and Mark Ryan (MSC)

Currently, the pace-setter in this is the all-Ireland-crewed Headcase, which in Howth is in just one of her home ports, but she’s back in town with an astonishing 2022 CV that started with winning the class at Kiel Week, then they won the UK Nationals, then they won their ICRA Class in Cork Week, and last weekend they took the Easterns.

HEADCASE TAKES ON LA SUPERBA

It says something about national characteristics that the top home hope in the up-coming championship is cheerfully called Headcase, yet the boat they most definitely have to topple from the top of the pile is from Italy and unblushingly called La Superba.
Make of that what you will, but La Superba is the Italian Navy boat, and back in 2020 in Greece she won the Euros skippered by a young naval officer called Iganzio Bonnano. He has probably moved on to be an admiral by now, but La Superba is very much up for it again in Howth, with her skipper yet to be named.

The Travellers – Headcase and crew about to depart Plymouth after winning the UK Nationals, with an overnight ferry trip in prospect to make the start of the first race in Volvo Cork Week where she logged a class win. Her all-Ireland credentials are further emphasized with the use of a Galway-registered towing vehicle

IRISH FLEET ON A ROLL

The defenders will find that the Irish J/24 fleet is on a bit of a roll at the moment, and there are interesting helms and crews coming up through the system. We’ve remarked in the past that Munster is the only Irish province not represented in Headcase’s crew, but this may well be because they’re developing their own J/24 U25 squads in Munster, with the Kinsale YC Kinsailors led by Michael O’Carroll coming through in the Easterns to take second overall, while Tadg O Loingsigh with his Tralee Bay squad in Janx Spirit went over to the UK Nats and were very much in contention, their scoreline including a first.

The Howth Peninsula seen from the southeast. The Race Area for the J/24 Europeans 2022 will be just above the middle of this photo.

Munster is further represented by the Foynes YC U25 crew on Jasper led by Mary McCormack, while over on the east coast, after very many years Flor O’Driscoll of Bray (and formerly Cobh) has sold his well-used Hard on Port to his crew led by David Bailey, and they now sail out of Greystones where class leader Mark Usher sets the pace with Hedgehog.

This trans-club interaction is reflected in the northwest where Sligo YC and Lough Erne YC - and doubtless Mullaghmore too - all make input into Gossip with the combined efforts of Oisin Brennan, Declan Brennan, Michael Staines and Muireann Toibin.

Getting your boat and crew from Sligo or Lough Erne to other venues in Ireland can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. But an event like the Euros with an international entry puts it all in perspective, as they come not only from Seattle to the far west, but also from the island of Crete in the far eastern Mediterranean. The logistics of getting boat and crew as a private entry from Heraklion to Howth defies contemplation, but Nikolas Kapnisis of Heraklion Sailing Club has been game to give it a whirl with his boat Legal Alien. And such entries will feel right at home among the J/24s in Howth.

Entry List for J24 European Championships

Sail Prefix	Sail No	Boat Name	Owner Name	Club	Corinthian	Over 50	Youth	Entry Date
IRL	39	Jeb Stuart	Andrew Mannion	Lough Ree Yacht Club	No	No	No	22 Feb
ITA	416	La Superba	Marina Militare Italiana	CVA Marina Militare Italiana	No	No	No	12 Aug
IRL	680	Kilcullen	HYC U25 2	Howth Yacht Club	No	No	No	24 May
IRL	767	Jade	Conor Haughton	Wicklow Sailing Club	Yes	No	No	31 May
IRL	1183	Red Flag	Greystones Sailing Club	Greystones Sailing Club	Yes	No	Yes	08 Jun
USA	2810	Jigalo	Joseph Murphy	Howth Yacht Club	No	No	No	08 Apr
IRL	3060	Headgehog	Mark Usher	Greystones Sailing Club	Yes	Yes	No	09 May
USA	3746	Easy Street	Denny Vaughan	Corinthian Yacht Club - Seattle	No	No	No	26 May
IRL	4084	Battling J	Malahide Yacht Club	Malahide Yacht Club	Yes	No	No	31 May
GBR	4153	Jam	Benjamin Maddaford	Saltash Sailing club	No	No	No	13 May
IRL	4188	Jasper 2	Mary McCormack - FYC U25	Foynes Yacht Club	No	No	Yes	23 Aug
IRL	4191	Janx Spirit	Tadhg O Loingsigh	Tralee Bay Sailing Club	Yes	No	No	12 May
GER	4202	Gossip	Oisin Brennan, Declan Brennan, Michael Staines, Muireann Toibin	Sligo Yacht Club/ Lough Erne Yacht Club	Yes	No	No	11 Aug
IRL	4212	Scandal	HYC U25 1	Howth Yacht Club	No	No	No	24 May
IRL	4236	KINSAILOR	KINSALE YACHT CLUB	Kinsale Yacht Club	Yes	No	Yes	15 Jun
GBR	4242	Hitchhiker	Chris Randall	Saltash Sailing Club	Yes	Yes	No	21 May
IRL	4247	Headcase	Louis Mulloy, Marcus Ryan, Cillian Dickson, Sam O'Byrne, Ryan Glynn	Howth Yacht Club, Lough Ree Yacht Club, Mayo Sailing Club, Ballyholme Yacht Club	Yes	No	No	25 May
GBR	4248	MaJic	James Torr	Saltash Sailing Club	Yes	No	No	28 May
GBR	4260	Mojosi	Nick McDonald	RYA	Yes	Yes	No	28 May
IRL	4265	Smugairle Róin	Diarmaid mullen	Sligo Yacht Club	No	No	No	20 Feb
GBR	4266	NJO2	Tim Octon	JOG	Yes	Yes	No	02 Mar
GBR	4269	Cacoon	David Hale	Poole Yacht Club	Yes	Yes	No	04 Mar
IRL	4384	Proud Mary	Brian mc conville	Carlingford Lough YC	No	Yes	No	12 May
IRL	4532	Jelignite	Finbarr Ryan	Lough Ree Yacht Club	No	Yes	No	22 May
IRL	4533	Crazy Horse	Luke Mc Bride	Lough Erne Yacht Club	Yes	Yes	No	19 May
IRL	4794	Hard on Port	David Bailey and crew	Bray Sailing Club	No	No	No	31 May
IRL	5159	Jibe	Fergus & Tim Kelliher	Tralee Bay Sailing Club	Yes	No	No	30 May
IRL	5219	IL Riccio	JP Mccaldin	Lough Erne Yacht Club	Yes	No	No	11 May
GRE	5239	Legal Alien	Nikolas Kapnisis	Heraklion Sailing Club	Yes	No	No	30 May
IRL	5278	Hung Jury	Brian Raftery	Sligo Yacht Club	Yes	Yes	No	20 Jul
IRL	5285	Yachtzee	Diarmuid O'Donovan	TBC	Yes	Yes	No	27 May
USA	5352	Amuse Bouche	Kurt Dammeier	Corinthian Yacht Club!	No	No	No	22 Jul
GRE	5367	JMANIA	Konstantinos Tridimas/Kynthia Skotida	Nautical Club of Palaio Faliro	Yes	No	No	08 Mar
GER	5381	Schwere Jungs	Stefan Karsunke	Blankeneser Segel Club	No	No	No	22 Jun
IRL	5475	Jedi	Colm O'Flaherty	Sligo Yacht Club	No	No	No	26 May