by Joe Cline
BEHIND THE BOOM EXPLORING THE RAPID GROWTH OF THE PNW J/70 FLEET
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et’s start with two facts. One, the J/70 — a 22.75-foot sport boat from J/Boats which debuted in 2012 — has quickly grown into one of the world’s most popular one-design keelboats, with more than 1,500 boats sailing worldwide. And two, I’m not selling them. While fleets exploded in many sailing hotspots around the United States during the 20-teens, the Pacific Northwest stayed eerily quiet. Since 2020, however, the winds have shifted, and the local fleet is growing at an eye-popping rate. First there were six J/70s in the San Juan Islands, then 10 — calling themselves “the J/Pod.” Then, I heard about one or two headed to Hood River. And after years of murmurs with little action, the chips fell just so in Seattle… and the rest is swiftly becoming history. The Pacific Northwest is now home to 34 J/70s actively racing, with many owners sensing the sudden critical mass, and wanting to get in on the ground floor of the local fleet. This is newsworthy on its own merits, but how and why this fleet is growing deserves deeper exploration. It’s not as if the J/70 was completely off the radar of Pacific Northwest sailors. In fact, this is a good time to ‘out’ myself as someone who poured a tall glass of J/70 Kool-Aid once before. In the year the boat was first built, a friend bought J/70 hull #19 from the initial truckload that came to the area. All four of these boats were sold, and our boat raced regularly; but we mustered a four-boat one-design fleet only once in two seasons of trying. Befuddled at how the fleet wasn't taking off here as it was in so many other venues, we had some fun and flailed a bit as we tried to learn how to sail the boat well, racing PHRF or straight-up against J/80s. After a couple of seasons, motivation waned and I went off chasing different racing dreams. Other than noting the ginormous fleets sailing at very high levels on the national and international stage, I haven’t thought much about the J/70 in the intervening years. Still, I perked-up when I heard that a fleet in the islands
48º NORTH
seemingly materialized out of nowhere, observing with cautious optimism driven by the same interests that drew me in a decade ago. And that’s where this story takes its more interesting turn. One that has me sipping a “slooper size” stein of J/70 Kool-Aid once more, but for notably different reasons. Enter Ron Rosenberg. It’s not right to say this is all Ron’s doing, but there’s no way to discuss the PNW’s J/70 fleet boom in the last few years without acknowledging that Ron is at the center of it. Indeed, he’s the newly-elected fleet captain, but he’s a whole lot more than that. RON ROSENBERG Ron Rosenberg Ron started sailing at 8 or 9 years old when his dad showed up one day with a Coronado 15. He says, “We went for a sail as a family of five, not knowing what we were doing. We capsized, and some strangers helped us get back to shore. And we had a ball together. That changed our lives.” Ron became the “young kid in the gang” at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, and he tried to keep up with the older kids. He got involved in doublehanded sailing and “won a youth worlds in 1981 in the doublehanded class when Russell Coutts won the singlehanded worlds. That was an eye-opener.” At that event, Dave Perry was assigned by US Sailing to coach his boat, and Ron started to see “how much you could learn from a very good coach in a short amount of time, and how mentors work through life.” Early in his career, Ron did a number of Olympic campaigns; and won the J/24, Soling, and Etchells worlds with Larry Klein between 1989 and 1991. Ron was an alternate on the 1992 US
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JUNE 2023