At the end of 1996, J&J was approached by Norbert Joris, the founder of the largest Belgian yacht maker, ETAP. ETAP’s sailing yachts were famous for their high-quality, their attention to detail, their practicality—and for being completely unsinkable. 

ETAP was looking into creating the largest sailboat they’d ever built, a new 39-footer. The J&J design office was faced with a design and development process coming from a much more structured industry than boating—high series production of illumination products. This called for time-consuming precision- and high-definition process of every element on the yacht, down to the smallest screw or fastener. The discipline and industrial method (of development and production) of more mature industries helped enormously in working for large boatbuilders owned by large industrial companies using same development process and product documentation for all their products. 

The ETAP 39 design also faced other challenges: making a boat this large unsinkable meant finding over 6 m3 of foam-filled spaces high in the boat sides—without reducing the locker and living spaces. At that time, well before the advent of 3D software or Virtual Reality technology in boat design work, we had to rely on wooden scale mock-ups—and some tedious calculations. ETAP 39 needed to be innovative, but also firmly remaining in the brand’s DNA. Fast, seaworthy, and practical. Easy to handle and easy to sail, even short-handed. This feature was very important, since most buyers were looking for something that could be sailed by families and/or husband-wife sailing teams. 

The design and engineering process of ETAP 39 helped the J&J office to understand—and adapt to—the industrial development process. Working with the ETAP engineering office was smooth and instructive, and the lessons of Norbert Joris (a man with tremendous energy, experience—and the father of eight children) will never be forgotten. 

ETAP 39 offered excellent build quality, meticulous attention to detail, and she sailed well. Her timeless design helped this yacht retain high resale value for many years—even after the ETAP yard closed.