Comfort is a sense of well-being. It is a faith in coming through no matter what the weather. The J-120's ease of operation means getting off the mooring in three minutes with people who've never sailed before, and sailing with mainsail alone with plenty of visibility and control in crowded harbors. Comfort is freedom from anxieties. Comfort is protection under a well-designed dodger with side curtains. The cockpit seat-backs are angled outward for sailing comfort to windward as well as lounging in harbor.
It has flared topsides that slap waves down instead of bouncing them up onto the deck. Comfort is a predictable, stable motion. Comfort is straight-as-an-arrow tracking of the long, narrow hull when running before seas. It is a balanced, not wedged, hull shape with enough reserve buoyancy forward to lift the bow easily over waves when surfing off the wind. Comfort is a responsive, large-diameter, leather covered wheel for one-hand steering from either side-deck or from behind the wheel. Sail controls are within easy reach for trimming mainsail and genoa (or asymmetric spinnaker) on long coastal passages - without leaving the wheel or relocating a safety harness. Two people can fly the asymmetrical to steady the boat and sail fast enough to make port in time for a walk ashore. Among 40-foot cruisers or racers, there's no match for the J-120's velocity made good upwind or downwind, doublehanded. VMG is the measure of sailboat design: velocity made good straight into the wind or away from the wind, regardless of tacking or jibing angles. A J-120 sailing at 7.2 knots, 38 degrees off the true wind (25 degrees apparent wind angle), makes good a velocity (VMG) of 5.7 knots straight into the wind. This is 15 percent faster than a boat doing 7 knots at a 45 degree true wind angle.
The J-120's performance is a function of a low center of gravity, a narrow waterline, good draft and a powerful sail area to displacement ratio. A key contributor is high-quality balsa-core laminate construction with 65 to 70 percent glass content achieved with TPI's resin infusion process. The Hall Spars carbon-fiber mast rather than aluminum saves 120 lbs. up high which is the equivalent of having two 200 lbs. crew on the weather rail when sailing to windward. Reaching at over 10 knots becomes almost a daily occurrence in a J-120. Two people can safely fly the asymmetrical spinnaker on its 7-foot retractable carbon-fiber J-Sprit. No one has to go on deck when the spinnaker is deployed. It's contained in a snuffer sock operated from the cockpit. Jibing is as easy as letting go the old sheet and pulling in the new one. Sailing downwind, the spinnaker projects out to windward from behind the wind shadow of the mainsail, driving the apparent wind as much as 50 degrees forward of true wind direction. The J-120's boat speed and wind speed are about equal in six knots of wind with a remarkable downwind velocity of nearly two-thirds the wind's speed.