An Interview With Rod Johnstone - Video

Richard Wooldridge, Racing In Paradise's chief slicer and dicer, speaks to Rod Johnstone, designer of the J/24, about his views on the IC/24 - the sliced and diced version of his brainchild.  Rod was taking a break from The Bitter End Yacht Club's ProAm in November 2006 where he was competing with the likes of Russell Coutts and Paul Cayard.  Racing In Paradise's fleet of IC/24s had been chartered for the event.

Rod Johnstone & The J/24

With a $20,000 investment, and a speedy 24-foot sailboat that Rod Johnstone built in his garage, Rod & his brother Bob Johnstone went into business. That was 1977. Now, that boat (the J/24), has become the most popular recreational offshore keelboat in the world.

The Johnstone family has made an undeniable mark on the sailing world. In addition to the 5,300 J/24s cruising the waves, there are over 5,000 more J/Boats, ranging from the International J/22 to the brand new J/65, that sailing enthusiasts have bought at prices ranging from $10,000 to $2,000,000.

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The story begins in 1975. Rod, then an ad salesman for the sailing trade magazine, Soundings, and an active one-design sailor decided to build a sailboat he had been designing since completing a Westlawn School of Yacht Design correspondence course in the 60's. With $400-worth of fiberglass and wood, some rigging and hardware left over from a Soling of Bob's, he built the 24' x 9' wide RAGTIME on weekends in his 3 car garage at his home in Stonington, Connecticut. During the summer of 1976, with an all family crew aboard, RAGTIME beat everything in sight. Rod realized he had created something special.

Enter Everett Pearson, the owner of Tillotson Pearson, Inc, a highly respected boat builder in Warren Rhode Island. He was quite taken with Rod's design and agreed to produce the boat on spec in return for the U.S. building rights. Display ads in Soundings got the word out. That winter they set up a makeshift factory in an old textile mill in nearby Fall River, Massachusetts, and began popping out J/24s.