J105 one design

[saurav16]

Question, I was on a J105 today, awesome boat. From what I understand its a one design which means the company gives out exact specs of the boat. How come other manufacturers don't copy it as a one design boat and offer it cheaper? Or do they?

[sailingdog]

Saurav16-

Apparently, you're a bit confused about the term one-design.

What the J105 being a one design means is that it is raced against other J105s as a class, and that they must conform to certain specifications, like sail area, mast height, etc., in order to be qualified to race. This basically means that most of the differences in performance will be due to the skill of the sailor, rather than the differences in the boat setup. You won't get boats with laminate racing sails and oversized full-batten roaches competing against boats with stock dacron sails.

The specifications have to do with the rigging, mast height, sail area, and things like that... but AFAIK, do not include the lofting lines for the hull. Granted you could buy one, strip the gear off of it, disassemble it and use it to make a mold, but copying a sailboat hull like that would still be rather expensive, and could end up in a serious lawsuit, especially if you want to sell the boat to compete in the J105 one-design class.

[poltergeist]

Mr. Sailingdog is right, but there's also the element that sailboat designers (and sailors for that matter) tend to be a pretty competitive lot. The Johnstone brothers set the one-design racing world on its ear a couple of decades ago when they designed the J-24 ... THEIR design answer to the challenge of building a fast, stable, affordable platform for racing. That success grew into the entire family of J boats. I'm sure if you do just a little poking around on the web, you'll find other class boats about the same size as a J-105 that claim to be faster, better, etc. etc., designed by people who think they can do a better job of designing and building a boat that size. Few designers want to imitate ... most want to come up with the next great thing that surpasses last year's boat.

Kurt

[jadkkd]

Has anyone sailed the J100? It's being advertised as a JBoat that can be sailed singlehanded with ease.