J/Boats

J/Boats is a family design office in Newport, Rhode Island — founded in 1977 when Rod Johnstone’s garage-built J/24 turned into the best-selling racing keelboat in history, with some 5,500 hulls. The firm has never owned a factory: it designs, licenses, and lets specialist builders mold the boats. Three generations of Johnstones have kept it that way.

The J/70, drawn by Rod’s son Alan in 2012, became the company’s fourth-biggest model ever and the largest sport-keelboat fleet of the modern era — roughly 1,900 hulls by the class’s count, built in parallel in Rhode Island, France and Argentina, racing in 25 countries. If one boat defines what one-design racing looks like this century, it’s this one.