Sail Far Live Free

Once again, I'm pleased to bring you another installment of my "4 simple questions with a sailboat designer" mini-interview series. This week, I welcome Bob Johnson from Island Packet Yachts to SailFarLiveFree.com. Bob Johnson's passion for sailing bloomed at an early age. He was only eight when he bought his own subscription to Yachting magazine, and fourteen when he wrote a term paper on his future career as a naval architect. That same year, he lofted his first sailboat on the living room floor, then sailed it down Lake Worth, with his brother holding a garden umbrella for a spinnaker. He was hooked for life. Even though he became a mechanical engineer, ending up at McDonnell Douglas designing missiles, his heart was still with sailboats. With a master's degree from MIT in naval architecture, he went to Florida and worked with Irwin Yachts and Endeavor, gradually becoming general manager. But he had a well engineered dream. He started Island Packet modestl...

The racer-cruiser concept has been around since the early 1960's (see Ted Brewer's 50 Years of Cruising Sailboat Evolution ). Today's examples seem less of a compromise and are able to offer excellent cruising accommodations while still being competitive on the race circuit. But compromises still exist, nonetheless. Now there's a new kid coming to the racer-cruiser neighborhood and I'm intrigued because the project collaborators are two designers who have produced several models that fill my cruising spirit with envy. Island Packet's founder and current CEO/Chief Designer, Bob Johnson, has teamed with his old buddy Tim Jacket, ex-President and Chief Designer at Tartan and C&C, to begin producing a "performance cruiser" called the Blue Jacket 40. The BJ40 is planned to be the first in a series of boats to come out of this collaboration. They'll be built at Island Packet's facilities and are said to be a melding of Bob's cruising design...