Back when most of my sailing was on LI Sound I was always impressed with how a large, expensive, one-design like the J/44 was able to maintain their core of racers. The owners chose to hold down costs and make the boats as alike as possible in their class events and championship by having the class maintain and manage the sail inventory. Worked for them but I don't know that they have survived the last economic downturn. The Windcheck article is from four years ago and there's nothing on j44.org.

In order to have one design club racing in your local fleet everyone is going to need a set of class sails. How that's provided is up to those involved. Our fleet has considered that the one sail of each type per year allowed in our Class rules may be overkill.

If you want to make it easy for anyone to borrow a boat and get a chance to sail a regatta or two each year one-design while racing PHRF back home this is one way to do it.

Report of the death of the J/44 Class was premature--nine J/44s sailed the 2011 American Yacht Club Fall Regatta in Rye, NY. Better turnout than more recent designs in their size range J/109 (5), Swan 42 (6), Beneteau First 36.7 (7) and J/122 (5 in IRC) , though not quite up to the level of J/105 (15) and J/80 (12).