J/Boats is an American boat builder based in Newport, Rhode Island and founded by Rod Johnstone in 1977.

"[2] Rod Johnstone had completed a correspondence course at the Westlawn School of Yacht Design in the 1960s and in 1975 was working selling advertising for Soundings, a sailing trade magazine, when he started a homebuilt boat project.

His first boat design, named Ragtime, was built on weekends, in his garage in Stonington, Connecticut.

He had been working as vice president of marketing for AMF/Alcort, the builders of the Sunfish sailboat at that time, but was unable to interest them in the J/24 design.

[1] The company intentionally avoided the production aspect of the business, leaving that to Pearson Yachts and instead concentrating on design and marketing.

[58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66] Overall BOTY: Segment Winners Further, between 1994 and 2008 Cruising World magazine[67] awarded two J/Boats high honors: