J/29 Wanderer, sail number 18555, sailing upwind with a crew of six on the rail

Meet Wanderer

Wanderer is a J/29, a 29-foot fractional-rigged racer from J/Boats, and she already knows the way north. Sailing as Elusive, she finished R2AK twice, placing 5th of more than 30 teams in 2023 and 7th of more than 60 in 2026.

Photo: Wanderer racing as Elusive. © Torok Media

Sponsor Wanderer 
History

Designed in 1982 and still racing hard four decades later.

Her story

Before she was Wanderer, this boat sailed as Violation, then Evasive, then Elusive (sail number 18555). She spent about 20 years as a well-kept cruising boat before a crew from Vancouver, BC, bought her in 2022 and spent four seasons turning her into an R2AK boat.

They raced her all the way to Ketchikan in 2023 and again in 2026, when she placed 7th in one of the largest fleets in R2AK history.

Built for R2AK

  • Twin side-mounted pedal drives that fold up under sail, for the calm stretches where wind gives out and engines aren't allowed

  • New standing rigging, a heavy Dacron main and #3 jib with deep reefs for big wind, and a carbon #1 jib for light air

  • Solar power, AIS, a chartplotter and a tillerpilot

  • A polycarbonate companionway shelter, a gimballed stove and quarterberths that sleep six

The J/29

Rod Johnstone designed the J/29 for J/Boats in 1982 as a light, upwind-capable racer that combined the best of the J/24 and the J/30. Just under 300 were built, in fractional and masthead versions, before production ended in 1987. Wanderer is a fractional-rig boat: 29.5 feet long, 11 feet wide and about 6,000 pounds.

J/29s on the race course

The first J/29 owners raced under MORC rules, then formed one-design fleets on the Chesapeake, with the first class North Americans held in Annapolis in 1985. Since then the J/29 has earned a reputation as one of the best PHRF boats around, and the class is making a comeback: seven J/29s raced one-design at the 2025 Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta in Annapolis.

J/29s in R2AK and the WA360

As far as we can tell from the published results, Wanderer is the only J/29 ever to race R2AK. In 2023, racing as Team Unfinished Business, she reached Ketchikan in 7 days, 23 hours and 25 minutes, 5th of the 18 teams that finished the full course. She went back in 2026 as Team Outliers, with the same skipper, and placed 7th in one of the biggest fleets the race has seen.

No J/29 has entered the WA360 so far. The 2021 and 2025 fleets ranged from kayaks and rowboats to Olson 30s, Melges 24s and Corsair trimarans, and the closest relative was a J/24 in 2025. When the 2027 race starts in Bellingham, Wanderer should be the first J/29 on the line.

Those two top-10 R2AK finishes show what the design can do over 750 miles of cold Pacific Northwest water. Next up: getting her ready for the WA360. We'll share the work as we go.