A Short-handed Sailing Machine Evolves- the J/121

Step-by-step, the J/121 offshore speedster is evolving at the CCF Composites facility in Bristol, RI; a city famous for its seafaring heritage that includes such notable sailing families as the Herreshoff’s. Today, it is home to the next generation of offshore sailing design. Evolving in the shadows of those fabled boat sheds on the Bristol shoreline is the new J/121, an offshore sailing machine designed to be sailed with five or fewer crew.
Critical to this design mandate is the careful engineering of critical boat-handling elements and deck/cockpit ergonomics, where even millimeters can make a difference. Wheel diameters, pedestal heights and placement, foot rest locations, skipper and crew sight-lines as well as trimming locations all add up to sailing faster and more safely with friends and family.
Full-scale prototyping with actual sailors in the cockpit is the best way to validate and optimize the computer rendering. The J/121 cockpit offers tremendous elbow-room across her expansive decks aft. The twin 36” wheels (mocked up in plywood in this picture) afford the skipper unprecedented views of the jib telltales and the ability to pick a faster track through steep seas approaching the bow, or diving for deeper troughs to surf and plane faster in following seas.
Today, the J/121’s ultra-fair CNC machined hull plug (by Symmetrix Composite Tooling) has produced gleaming hull molds, with the first hull due to be vacuum-bag formed in the next week. More news to follow on this game-changing offshore sailing machine!