JumpA who brought Mr JumpA into North America:
We bought the boat from Graeme in KZ and had it shipped to Long Beach and it was trucked to Florida for the SORC. Our total budget for purchase, the SORC included crew expenses and new sails was something like $75,000 with $47,000 being the purchase price. That was it for a world be**er. Amazing when you think that today that would only buy you a com
petitive sail plan for a Farr 40. We bought the boat from the original owners and they came over with her to do the 78 SORC, and we also had some guest appearances from the first woman to sail in the America’s cup Christy Steinman and the famous single hander Walter Greene did a leg with us. After the circuit we had an agreement with Ted Turner for a charter for the 1 Ton NA’s in Harbor springs but it fell through when Dave Irish and others threatened to protest the rating. Another Ted quote after he backed out, “Hell boys, (you sense a pattern in his speech) I’m just not going to take it, you can sue me if you want, that’s what lawyers are for” needless to say we dropped the issue. The boat was hammered by the IOR in the spring of 78, Garry Mull came back from the IOR technical meeting in London and told us we were screwed, whenever a rule change was proposed Olin Stevens said, “run it with Mr Jumpa’s certificate” so they in essence used us for the archetype of what they wanted to penalize. I can’t remember the exact rating bump but it was a lot. The irony here is that they were concerned that this type of boat was too light and thus unsafe, here you are 30 years later sailing the same hull, too light indeed! Of note was that during this time we also led the World Ocean Racing Championship for all of 1978. The boat also won the NYYC annual cruise boat of the year while under charter that summer. The co-owner John W was a surgeon who went through a divorce and a subsequent bankruptcy so we decided to let the boat go back to the bank that had financed it for us. I had put cash into the deal and lost that but what the hell; I’ve got a Lipton Cup and a Nassau Cup trophy sitting here to this day. John W kept the other trophies we won but his office was broken into a couple years later and the silver went away, kind of sad really. The best way to describe the frogs is to tell you about Ted Turner’s observations when he first got on the boat during the 78 SORC. “Hell I’m the 505 champion I could sail this thing, it’s just a big dingy”
On the frogs, “Hell, if I bought this boat I’d put two people screwing on the back and call it Mr Humpa”
My understanding was that Mr. Jump was a KZ sportswear company, I had a Mr. Jump sweater for a while that went away years ago. The real reason the A was added was the old RRS Rule 26, which prohibited sponsorship, I believe that Mr. Jump had financed the project in the worlds to the tune of about $5K not much by today’s standards. Feel free to ask any more questions. I think the boat looked better with the original NZ Kauri wood natural finish
Cheers, Bob
