Brooklin Boat Yard: Botin 43

Photos courtesy Brooklin Boat Yard

Designed with a 10' 4" keel, Jax was launched with one purpose in mind: to bring home Spirit of Tradition racing trophies.

In August, 2023, Brooklin Boat Yard launched the flush-deck, full-on raceboat Jax, its third collaboration with Botin Partners Naval Architecture, on boats intended for Spirit of Tradition competitions. 

At 43', Jax is the smallest of the three Botin designs built at Brooklin. Siblings include Toroa and Outlier, both successful racer-cruisers in their own right. But this time around, the owner commissioning Jax was exclusively focused on winning races, so Jax does not carry the comforts and accommodations of her larger cousins.

Jax features a deep, 10' 4" fixed keel affixed to a cold molded wood-composite hull. On deck, the coaming, companionway, and wheel are all of varnished wood, but, notably, Jax’s deck is comprised of foam and carbon fiber. Carbon was also used to reinforce chainplates and the keel structure. On deck, hardware includes the latest winches from Harken.

Renowned in performance sailboat racing circles, designs by Botin Partners of Cantabria, Spain, include winners of the Louis Vuitton Cup; the ORC and TP 52 World Championships; and the Sydney Hobart, Fastnet, and Middle Sea races. When Marcelino Botin, Paolo Periotto, and their colleagues set out to create a new design that combined speed with elegance and comfortable cruising accommodations, they selected Brooklin Boat Yard to construct the vessel. Few boatbuilders have more experience than BBY with cold molded wood, foam core, and carbon-fiber composite laminates. The Brooklin team is also one of the most experienced when it comes to producing exquisite interiors for cruising. They know how to achieve the desired appearance without adding any extra weight that would compromise the desired performance. 

With a cold-molded hull and carbon-fiber and foam composite deck, Jax is a mix of top-notch materials and craftsmanship.

The first Botin-Brooklin collaboration was Taroa, launched in 2017. Taroa is a 73' performance-racer, fitted with elegant cruising accommodations. The design has a beam of 20' and draft that reduces from 14' to 9' when the lifting T keel is raised. Taroa’s hull includes features found on many modern high-performance racers including a long bowsprit in front of a plumb stem, straight waterlines forward, flat buttocks aft leading to twin rudders and a broad, flat transom. The design also included features more typical of yachts and working vessels from the late 19th and early 20th centuries: varnished coamings and cabin trunk, and a butterfly skylight on the foredeck. Viewed from up close Taroa looks like a powerful yet uncommonly graceful racing machine, yet there are also elements of this attractive design that bring to mind the famed 1905 Falmouth Quay Punt, Curlew.  

Mast-mounted display screens let the helmsman and crew monitor the variables when it comes to steering and sail trim.

Next came Outlier, completed in 2019. Again, Botin and Brooklin combined a high-performance hull form and rig with traditional styling and aesthetics on deck and below. To my eye, this second collaboration was somewhat less successful in marrying traditional aesthetics with modern performance, but to be fair it is far more challenging to achieve elegance with less overall length with which to work. Outlier is described by the builder as a Spirit of Tradition racer, and she has consistently performed well in that class, both as a comfortable cruising vessel and against her peers on the race course. 

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Brendan Riordan is a yacht designer at Stephens Waring in Belfast, Maine. 

JAX Specifications

LOA:  43'4"
LWL:  40'4"
Beam:  11'6"
Draft:  10'4"
Displ.: 15,432 lbs.

Designer: 
Botin Partners Naval Architecture
Cantabria, Spain
www.botinpartners.com

Builder:
Brooklin Boat Yard
Center Harbor Road, Brooklin, ME
207-359-2236
www.brooklinboatyard.com