Found her!

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It is unlikely that you would find a rare high performance French sailboat on a lake in Arkansas, but I did. And she waited patiently for a year for us to buy her. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Blue J (RYA GBR-5443T) came to the USA with her original owner, who bought her in the UK in 1996. He sailed her on the Solent for several years, once taking a very impressive 24th (corrected time) in the Around The Island race at Cowes. Upon coming back to the states,  he had a custom trailer made and brought her with him, and sailed her in Boston.

But he longed for one-design sailing, so he sold her to a man in Louisiana who never sailed her and kept her on a lake in the Ozark Mountains. I found her, advertised in the Little Rock craigslist pages. But then some things came up, and I had a different focus. So into the back of my mind went BlueJ, put aside but not forgotten. A year later, when I figured that a bigger boat than my First 235 Jackdaw might be great on Minnetonka at Wayzata yacht Club, on a lark I emailed the owner to see if she was still available. Several phone calls later, I was on my way to Lake Degray. This was my first sight of her, and the beginning of our adventures together.



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