J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Smack J/30 Class History

OK so who knows how many consecutive years the National class has served its members? What anniversary are we celebrating?

I'm a relative newbie, I've only been around since 1986 but I know it's older than that because I have 3 or 4 older copies of the J/30 Journal that pre-date my boat. I'm guessing 30 years

I have an original copy of the 12 page J/30 Newsletter No. 1 put out by the "J/30 Class Association" dated October 1979. There are no by-lines on any of the articles and no return address.

J/30 News No. 2, was dated April 1981. The front cover does not indicate it is from the association and the back cover has a bulk rate stamp marked Mystic, CT. It is 48 pages with a mix of race reports and how-to articles, many with bylines, plus advertising. My second hand copy is missing pages 23-26--someone probably lifted the rules or figured they were obsolete when they copied, since page 27-28 are the spec diagrams.

On page three is an article J/30 Class Organizes for '81 that begins, "The North American J/30 Class Association had its first meeting of 1981 by conference call at 9:00 p.m., February 5...". Bob Johnstone chaired the meeting and noted J/Boats was producing four boats a week and by June there would be 350 J/30s sailing. Answering the roll call were representatives from Fleet #1 Holland, MI through Fleet #19 Southeast, FL. Jim and Ann Stuursma of Holland, MI were unanimously elected president and secretary.

Note it says 'first meeting of 1981' which means they probably met previously, most likely at the NA or midwinter regattas. But electing the first president is a significant step, 30 years ago. Fat City may be the only one who has been around long enough to know more.

Rob,

This might be the highest resolution copy of the spec drawings in existence.

Is there any way you could do as high a resolution scan as possible of the spec pages (27-28)? I am a graphic designer and have the tools to create a proper vector drawing from the scan. The current example on the web site is too low in resolution to be helpful. We can use dropbox or you send it to get the scan over to me.

A 800-1200 pixel per inch scan would be ideal (if it is indeed a simple b&w document). Most desktop scanners should be adequate. If this is beyond what is handy for you it may even be worth going to a local print shop for a scan.

Of course I'd be more than happy to share the vector drawing with the Class Association. This will be a great resource if we want to get line drawing t-shirts/flags/etc done up.

Feel free to message me to work out the details.

Regards,

Inside my boat on the main bulkhead is a class association sticker dated 1981.

Bob - would you please scan that and send me the file so I can post it?