- Local News for Southern Sailors
- June 2002 Next Story
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Tribe... a quantum leap from Lasers By Jim Kempert |
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 Vertical clearance under Tribe's bow wing reaches seven feet. |
Peter Johnstone, noted Laser racer and promoter of the 49er and Escape dinghies, was taking time out of a world cruise to visit dad Bob Johnstone, cofounder of J/Boats. It was Peter's new Gunboat 62 Tribe that was taking advantage of blustery spring winds to stretch its legs and show up the fleet of J/24s.
"When you're doing 16 knots, you're going past everything so fast," Johnstone said. "As soon as we saw 34 apparent, that's when we started lifting the hull. We had already done two laps of Charleston Harbor in 45 minutes."
The same trip in a PHRF monohull would be considered quickly done in two hours.
Johnstone says his jump to multihulls was the natural result of his search for a boat to haul himself and wife Hadley along with son Nicholas, 9, and daughter India, 6, (the tribe) around the world in speed and safety.
"I had a sled that won the TransPac in 1987 that was fitted out for cruising, but I realized when the wind or the seas picked up, everyone was miserable," he said. "I started thinking about cats, but I couldn't find any that had the qualities I wanted to go offshore with."
So Johnstone designed his own boat with the help of Morrelli and Melvin of PlayStation fame. The big cat measures in at 62 feet LOA from the staircase-like swim platforms at the sterns to the near razor-sharp bows (Johnstone says he had them purposely rounded down to prevent cuts), and a 29-foot, 5-inch beam that's wider than some beachfront condos.
Forget cabins...the airy, open-plan main salon is reminiscent of a studio apartment. An aft cockpit is outfitted with tables and chairs, but look closely and you'll notice there's no sailing going on there. All boat-handling gear and sail controls are concentrated in a neat well just aft of the mast and forward of the pilothouse that Johnstone labels "fabulous."
"It's great to be on watch," he said. "Everything you need is right here, and if it starts blowing or raining, you just close the door. You don't even put on sunblock when you sail this boat."
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A tour of the facilities reveals an almost obsessive commitment to the latest and lightest materials, which resulted in a decidedly lean 26,000-pound displacement for so much elbow room. Add 34,000 square feet of sail, and the twin carbon hulls positively slice through the water. Substantial weight savings came from the use of carbon spars with high-tech stays that inspire Johnstone to gush of the joys of linear polymers.
"The standing rigging for the whole boat weighs 30 pounds," he said. "If it was stainless, it would be more like 300 to 400 pounds."
Other nice touches include Spectra hanks on the headsail and a trampoline net with no knots — it came out of a mold looking like that. Chain plates for the scientific stays are replaced with Spectra line lashings that remind Bob Johnstone of something off a nineteenth-century sailing ship.
It's a thin layer of deception, much like the all-composite interior fittings with high-pressure wood laminate to break up the otherwise all-white motif. The interiors of two separate collision compartments in each bow were left unpainted to save weight and show off the quality of construction.
The boat was built by Harvey Yachts of Cape Town last year. Johnstone said he had planned to go to New Zealand to seek out a builder but decided to spend two weeks looking in South Africa and was impressed.
"The quality of the work is just perfect," he said. "I don't think we could have gotten this good work here or in New Zealand."
The price of perfection is $1.5 million, but as more boats are produced, the costs will probably come down. Johnstone also says there are plans to develop a 48-foot version to be built in the United States.
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