Describe your sailing background: 
I learned to sail in a Sunfish at summer camp when I was eleven years old. I sailed a bit in college but couldn’t do it very often due to a hectic class schedule. Nearly all of my sailing up to this point was daysailing in dinghies. I raced rarely if ever. After I completed graduate school, I took a job in NJ and decided to get back into sailing. I eventually bought a ten-year old J/24 with the intention of daysailing and club racing it. I also wanted to take short cruises on the boat. Before Carol and I met, she did not sail but had grown up around power boats. She quickly got used to sailing and joined our Wednesday night racing crew. We also did lots of daysailing on the weekends, but not much cruising since there aren’t many interesting destinations reachable in a day in a J/24 from our harbor. Because we live quite a distance from Atlantic Highlands, we also began spending weekends on the J/24. Not the most comfortable place to sleep, but definitely better than sitting in traffic on the Garden State Parkway.

What boats did you own prior to the J/32? 
Just the J/24.

What compelled you to buy a J/32?
I think the beginning of the end of the J/24 came on a cold November day several years ago. That day Carol, I, and some other J/24 sailors from our J/24 Fleet went out in a very nice 50-foot sailboat in 25-30 knots of wind to pull our permanent racing marks from Sandy Hook Bay. Once Carol discovered how well a cockpit dodger blocked the wind and that hot soup could be cooked on a boat, I knew in my heart that the J/24’s days were numbered.

Some time in the fall of 1996 I began seeing ads for J/32s. Although I had no intention of buying a boat at that time, I was curious what a "cruising-oriented J/Boat for couples and small families" looked like. The following winter Carol and I made our annual trek to Atlantic City for Sail Expo. As was our custom, we dropped by the J/Boats booth to see the new boats and say hello to Bill Nellis of Custom Offshore Yachts, who, several years earlier, had taken over for the salesman who originally sold me my J/24. Bill showed us around the J/32 and spent some time telling us about the boat’s features. He also gave us some brochures and other information on the boat. Although we looked at many other boats at the show, our conversations during the long drive home kept coming back to how much we liked the J/32. Maybe we’d investigate buying one down the road.

And what a short road it was! A couple of weeks after the boat show Bill called and asked if we’d like to take another look at the Sail Expo J/32, which was now sitting in Custom Offshore’s yard. We did so and after this visit began to think more seriously about buying one. We also investigated several other boats in the same approximate size range. We wanted a boat that was well-built, easy and fun for the two of us to sail, pleasing to look at, had a comfortable interior, would be competitive in a club race (Mark), and had a dodger and standing headroom down below (Carol). Having spent lots of time daysailing the J/24 with just the mainsail while Carol napped in the cabin, I also wanted a boat that would perform reasonably well on all points of sail using just the mainsail, and a mainsail that could be trimmed from the helmsman’s position. After looking at several other boats and re-examining the J/32, we were fairly sure the J/32 was the right boat for us. After we sailed on Rob Damagella’s J/32 Eclipse (hull #3; the boat we saw at Sail Expo) in Long Island Sound, we were convinced. Having sailed our own boat for nearly a full season, we are even more confident that this boat is perfect for our needs.

What is the best feature of the J/32….second? 
The best feature is the excellent sailing performance with only two people aboard. We can point higher and sail faster than many larger cruising boats we see in our sailing area. Neither of us are racing rock stars—this boat is just very easy to sail well. The deck hardware is laid out in a way that makes it easy for Carol and me to manage the boat by ourselves in both light and heavy air. The helm balances beautifully under sail. As I had hoped, the boat also sails well with just the mainsail, which makes lazy sailing easy and enjoyable.

The second-best feature is the interior layout. The boat is very well-organized for two people to spend long periods of time aboard. It’s easy to move around down below without getting in each other’s way. There’s plenty of storage space for sailing equipment, spare parts, and galley supplies. Between the hatches, ports, and Dorade vents, the interior is very well ventilated and illuminated. Sitting down below is comfortable and relaxing. When I first saw the J/32 at Sail Expo, I thought a sit-down nav station would be better, but after having used the J/32 nav station on several trips, I find I much prefer the stand-up nav station. The additional space freed up by eliminating a nav station seat is a nice bonus.

Have you added any custom features to your J/32?
We made several modifications to our boat that other owners may want to consider. In some cases, the Custom Offshore team suggested these modifications, but in all cases Custom Offshore listened to our ideas and figured out how to make them work on our boat. Our mainsail configuration is different from a stock J/32 in several respects. We have an Antal mast track with a fully-battened mainsail. As drawn, the J/32 sailplan shows a mainsail that would chafe against the backstay after every tack. At the suggestion of our sailmaker, Dave Thompson of John Eggers Sailmakers, our mainsail has slightly less roach than a conventional J/32 mainsail, but with little or no loss of performance. Our mainsheeting system uses a dual-purchase 4:1/16:1 system that uses all of the existing deck hardware from the standard 6:1 system. Custom Offshore upgraded the standard Harken traveler car to a windward-sheeting model, which makes it easier to adjust mainsail trim while sailing upwind. Instead of the Martec folding prop, Custom Offshore replaced it with a Max-Prop feathering prop. This prop gives us great maneuverability and incredible reverse thrust, which is very handy when approaching a crowded dock. We have a below-decks Robertson autopilot that does a great job steering the boat. This autopilot is also useful in standby mode as its graphical rudder angle indicator gives us a hint when we’ve got too much weather helm in light air. Finally, we have KVH wind and speed instruments as well as a SailComp.

Describe your most memorable J/32 voyage.
Although this wasn’t our longest cruise, our most memorable cruise was a cruise from Atlantic Highlands to Fire Island over the July 4^th weekend with several other boats from our yacht club. Fire Island is about 40 nautical miles east of Atlantic Highlands, on the south shore of Long Island. We motored part of the way there and when the breeze filled in, had a glorious sail the rest of the way there. While we were motoring, Carol managed to find time to take a (hot!) shower in the head. Quite a different experience than our J/24 sailing! When we arrived at Fire Island, we anchored in a small cove just east of Fire Island Inlet. The bow roller and anchor locker made it easy to deploy our Delta anchor. As we all settled into serious relaxation mode, each boat in the group hosted a social event on their boat. We hosted afternoon cocktails on the second day of the cruise. At its peak we had eight people in our cockpit eating, drinking, and having a good time. Everyone was impressed with how roomy and comfortable the cockpit was. (We received many compliments about the rest of the boat, too).

Although we didn’t get to see many fireworks on July 4, nature provided more interesting fireworks later that evening. We were asleep in the forward cabin when we were awakened at 0400 by a VERY loud clap of thunder. The wind had increased and shifted 180 degrees. Two rafted power boats that were anchored downwind of us when we went to sleep had dragged their anchor and were now bumping into our boat as they drifted by. As they continued drifting away we noticed that no one was on deck of either boat. We blasted our airhorn and shined a bright flashlight into the cabins of both boats until we saw people moving around on deck resetting the anchor. A quick inspection of our topsides revealed absolutely no damage to our boat. More importantly, our own anchor did not drag.

When we prepared to weigh anchor the next day, I expected it to be a difficult task, figuring that our anchor was well dug-in since we hadn’t dragged the previous night. Surprisingly, the configuration of the bow pulpit and anchor roller made it easy to extricate the anchor from the muck without excessive strain on the human windlass (me). We motored through the chop in Fire Island Inlet and, once in the ocean, beam reached under mainsail alone in the 18-20 knot northerly while we ate breakfast. We then partially unrolled our 150 and began making up ground on our fellow cruisers. When the wind dropped to about 15 knots, we unrolled the rest of the genoa. This was sailing at its best. We were moving at a decent speed in comfort with the boat in complete control. We caught up to and passed the other members of our fleet and continued towards Atlantic Highlands.

As we got closer to Atlantic Highlands, we gave a large freighter approaching New York Harbor a very wide berth. As this ship continued past us and entered Ambrose Channel, one of the deep-draft channels into New York Harbor, I went below to plot our position on the chart. While I was doing that, I heard a voice on the VHF radio saying "Northbound freighter in Ambrose Channel, this is a United States Navy warship southbound in Ambrose Channel…" Hmm. Better tack away from that channel again. We saw a big warship coming down the channel with big guns on the bow and a helicopter on deck near the stern. Unfortunately, this warship had a Canadian Flag on its stern. As we sailed parallel to the channel, we saw another ship approaching in the distance. By this time the wind was beginning to die. As the second ship passed, we saw this was the US ship we heard on the radio. The windspeed continued to decrease. As the US ship passed and the windspeed continued to drop, we noticed yet another ship coming down the channel. Rather than risk sailing through a busy shipping channel in a dying breeze, we rolled up the genoa, fired up the engine, and crossed the channel at a safe opportunity. The breeze never came back and we ended up motoring the rest of the way home. We saw a total of seven warships come out of New York Harbor. We found out later that there had been some sort of July 4^th event in the harbor.

Although this cruise was a short one, it gave us a wonderful opportunity to enjoy our boat in the company of friends, and the satisfaction that our boat could get us somewhere quickly and comfortably. When we bought the J/32, I never would have thought how much fun even a short cruise like this would be on the boat. The boat is clearly capable of sailing much longer distances in more challenging conditions and we look forward to longer cruises in the future.

Please share any add’l J/32 experiences.
We’ve starting racing the boat this season in our yacht club’s PHRF B fleet. With a 150% genoa and a borrowed whisker pole, we are very competitive, especially in heavy air when we can carry more sail than our competitors and still keep the boat on its feet. I think we came in 2^nd place in our club’s most recent five-race Wednesday night series, and won two of the five races in that series.

What are your future sailing plans with the J/32?
Our cruising plans over the next several years include spending time in Long Island Sound, New England, and possibly the Chesapeake Bay. Some day we’d also like to try doing a serious distance race in the J/32 such as the Around-Long-Island Race or one of the distance races to Bermuda. The real limitation to what we can do with our J/32 is not the boat, but rather the amount of free time in our schedules and the NJ summers, which never seem long enough.