There’s a J-29 up in the frozen north that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit. For those unacquainted with the design it looks something like this…
It, like most of it’s J-Boat brethren, is a boat designed and built to be competitive so you may be wondering why the hell am I looking at it?
Well, you might say, I have a sorta/kinda cunning plan for a boat of this ilk.
For starters there’s not much of an interior so it would be very easy to do a new performance cruising interior and as long as we’re installing a neat little galley we might take the opportunity to do a new mast step while we’re at it.
A new VolksCruiserish rig spelled junk or lug would make for a neat testbed and as there are quite a few J-29s about it owned by folks who’d enjoy sailing against a J-29 with a different (some might call it freakish) rig it would be an awesome educational endeavor and I’d enjoy it.
As the boat in question is selling for not very much I’d expect to be able to the needful mods and suchlike to keep the finished boat a kiss less than $10.5K.
The only issue that keeps me from jumping on a plane cash in hand to get is the fact that the J-29 has almost six feet of draft and that’s not going to work for my cruising plans.
So it does go.
That said if draft is not a deal breaker for you the J-29 is a pretty great candidate for a performance VolksCruiser and you might want to keep an eye out for a good deal on one.
Really, mr. Wise, your post makes me think about something like a Muscadet with a lugsail similar to Nigel Irens Roxanne would be a very good idea… seems it will make a good minimal volkscruiser for one, what do you think?
The Muscadet is a great little boat, That said I have seen many couples .which have cruised long term and sailed Atlantic circles without issue. Lots of small boats including the Roxanne would work just fine. The real issue is just having the proper mindset to make them work.
While lug rigs make the most sense in terms of maximum power per dollar I would not advise changing rigs unless the rig needed replacing and it made sense in terms of budget.