Let's go," Bob Johnstone said. We’d been talking over the phone, weighing the pros and cons of our plan to slip through a pair of weather fronts on a one-stop delivery of his MJM 34z. Day one would start at Boston BoatWorks, builder of the 34z, in the middle of the afternoon on Monday, June 28. Day two would begin at first light the next day (yuk!), taking us from the Cape Ann Marina in Gloucester, MA, to Northeast Harbor, ME, in a corridor of clear weather. The weather forecasters claimed that a squally front from the west would pass the coast overnight and slowly dissipate offshore, and the second front would gallop in from the west, carrying more thunderstorms and high winds. We decided to test the accuracy of these forecasts, feeling certain that we’d be safely in port during the first onslaught—but merely hoping that we’d make Northeast Harbor before the second front caught up to us.

The MJM 34z is perfect for this sort of short hop between marinas. Designed by Doug Zurn, it combines speed and economical running with good looks, comfort and exemplary seakeeping. The acronym MJM stands for Mary Johnstone’s Motorboat. Mary is Bob’s wife. The Johnstone’s owned a Dyer 29, and loved it, especially Mary, but the semi-planing hull limits its top speed. Also, its shallow deadrise in the run and relatively deep forefoot causes it to steer by the bow (also called rooting) downwind if you push it too hard. When the two of them talked about the ideal replacement for the Dyer, they agreed that it should have more useful, livable space—of the sort that encourages friends to share in the fun. It should be faster than the Dyer, kind to its crew in rough seas, and Mary should be able to handle it solo—at sea and around the marina. The only way to get exactly what they wanted was to commission a design and have a first-rate shop build it. Johnstone also figured that if he and Mary loved the 34z, other folks would too, so they decided early in the process to offer production versions for sale.

Johnstone demands a lot from the designer, his knowledge and experience having established strong opinions. First and foremost, the boat had to be handsome but remain pinned to the traditional New England aesthetic. Size, meaning displacement as much as length and beam, came next. The boat had to be large enough to house comfortable berths for two, a head with shower, a usable galley, a dinette and standing headroom below. The social center would be on the bridge deck under the hardtop and in the cockpit. For the Johnstones and Zurn, the best compromise came at 34 feet LOA on a beam of 10 feet, 8 inches and a half-load displacement of 10,600 pounds. To put the 34z into perspective, consider the following: the Legacy 34 has a beam of 12 feet, 5 inches and a displacement of 15,800 pounds.; the Sabreline 34 Express has a beam of 12 feet, 6 inches and a displacement of 15,850 pounds.

Keeping the weight at a reasonable level is most difficult. A lightweight boat requires careful engineering and equally careful construction. Only when the team exorcises all of the useless weight from the laminate can it begin to add the amenities that most modern boat owners require. To this end, Boston BoatWorks, headed by master builder Mark Lindsay, constructs the hull of the MJM 34z of stitched biaxial E-glass, Kevlar and epoxy over a Core-Cell core. Core-Cell is a closed-cell structural foam of outstanding physical properties, among which are great sheer strength and resistance to damage from impact. The yard impregnates the fabric with resin on a machine in the shop, calculating to a fraction of a percent the resin/fabric ratio, and places it into the mold while it’s still wet. Builders refer to this method as wet pre-preg. The crew then vacuum-bags the laminate and post-cures it at 145 degrees Fahrenheit. A solid laminate of unidirectional E-glass/epoxy along the keel and chines, combined with a structural grid, minimizes damage from grounding or collisions with debris. A solid laminate or high-compression Penske-Board coring in way of the through-bolted hardware and through-hull fittings provides compressive strength in those areas. The 34z exceeds CE Mark structural standards for an Ocean A Category vessel as established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO considers a boat built to this standard suitable for seas of up to 23 feet and winds of 41 to 47 knots. BBW builds the deck and superstructure in the same way but uses Baltek balsa coring—stiff and light.

In a market that’s bursting at the seams with boats of 30 to 40 feet styled in the New England tradition, the MJM 34z doesn’t have any peers. In addition to her uncommonly light weight, the purposeful demeanor sets her apart from every boat in this group. Instead of merely following the path to success worn into the market by Hinckley, Legacy, Sabre, Eastbay, Mainship, San Juan and others in the so-called down east style, Zurn and Johnstone turned sharply left.

The 34z wears a reverse sheerline, instead of the springy sheer that characterizes her niche-mates. Her stem sweeps aft in a nearly straight line, and the bow flares more aggressively than we’ve come to expect of down east boats. Reversing the sheerline, in addition to placing the design into the 21st century, let Zurn get the height he needed for headroom without resorting to the upright, and sometimes ungainly, trunk cabins we’ve seen around the harbors. Instead, Zurn drew an almost delicate low-profile trunk cabin, the lines of which blend perfectly with the windscreen and hardtop.

 If you study the 34z’s profile, you’ll see a slight S-curve in the sheer. It drops gently to the cockpit, as do the sides of the house. The pilothouse has 6 feet, 6 inches of headroom, and to disguise its height, Johnstone and Zurn opened the structure, defining its edges with spindly, but strong, pillars. Instead of glass windows, Johnstone specified clear vinyl roll-up windows between the vertical supports, and a clear vinyl enclosure at the after end of the house. At anchor, all the curtains rolled and the windscreen panels opened, the breeze will wash the bridge deck while the crew and guests sip cocktails before going ashore for a fashionably late dinner.

 We cast off from BBW at about 4:30 for our 90-minute run to Gloucester. Although Boston has changed a lot over the years, the skyline seen from the water still has the delightfully accidental nature begun by the random development of the early 1600s. Few cities in the world have so much character squeezed into so little area. We headed for the ship channel and points northeast at a cruising speed of about 24 knots. The autopilot steered while Johnstone and I relaxed in our Stidd chairs and talked about boats, the coast of Massachusetts, and the enduring appeal of the New England style. Although horse’s tails streamed across the blue sky high above us, indicating that some change in the weather approached, the front was more than six hours west. We slowed for the approach to Gloucester Harbor.

 “Byman Bridge, Byman Bridge, this is Grace approaching from the east, over,” I said into the microphone. We’d caught the bridge while it was open and wanted to make sure the keeper saw us. We were entering the canal that connects Massachusetts Bay with Ipswich Bay to the northeast. The canal is short and includes a stretch of the Essex River, home to a thriving shipbuilding industry in the 19th century. Although the entire canal is a no-wake zone, it saves traveling around Cape Ann. We tied up at the Cape Ann Marina, and by 7 p.m. were sitting at a table in the Gull restaurant, eating dinner and having a lively chat with Mark Lindsay, who lives nearby.

 Later that night aboard Grace, Johnstone and I picked up the latest progress reports from the Newport/Bermuda race—he wanted to know how his J Boats customers were doing—and hit the sack by about 10 o’clock. I selected a berth on the bridge deck, and Johnstone settled into one of the singles in the bow. A dining table separates the two berths below, making the area a gathering place for meals, card games, or conversation when you don’t want to be topside. Buyers may specify a double berth in place of the table and twins. On the bridge deck, I turned the helmsman’s seat to face aft, removed the armrest from the after end of the settee and placed the cushion in the empty space at my feet. I climbed into my sleeping bag and closed my eyes for a short night.

 If the front we expected had blown through during the night, I slept through it. In any case, I woke to the calls of sea gulls and the brightening sky some time before 5 a.m. Johnstone stirred below, and I wobbled sleepily to the shower at the marina. When I returned to the boat, Johnstone was showering, and the VHF was squawking the weather report. So far, our luck was holding. We’d have a clear run northeastward. After a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee, we cast off and idled through the canal at high tide. A bow thruster and a stern thruster make child’s play of maneuvering the single-screw 34z.

We raced northeastward at 24 knots on the Gulf of Maine, low clouds, or a fog bank, defining the eastern horizon and high, dark cumulous clouds filling the sky to our west. Above, a clear blue sky guided us along our course. In the Gulf of Maine, we had nothing but the vast and often cantankerous North Atlantic Ocean between us and the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. As so often happens in the ocean, a disturbance far to the east drove a rolling swell of five to six feet into our path. The winds, too, had shifted from the west to southwest and later, southeast, giving us beam seas and wind. During my stint at the wheel, I merely held our compass course, marveling at the 34z’s ability to hold its line while I made small corrections at the wheel. She’s a delight to steer, responding quickly, almost eagerly, to changes in course, large or small. Feel at the wheel is light and positive, always letting me know what the rudder is doing.

 When Johnstone was at the helm, he played the swells as though he were sailing a high-performance dinghy—running up the face and then quickly bearing off to surf along the swell until it dropped us into the following trough. Powered by a 440-hp Yanmar diesel, the 34z has a top speed of about 32 knots, giving the owner the option of outrunning bad weather. We happily maintained our 24-knot cruise, which seemed perfect for the conditions, especially as the wind increased and whipped a chop atop the rollers.

As the clock edged toward 2 p.m. and a fog bank crept ever closer to the coastline, we turned into the quiet of Northeast Harbor. The front from the west didn’t show up at all in Northeast Harbor, but it battered Boston and delayed my flight. I thought about the trip while I waited. The 34z offers a high-performance alternative to other boats in her niche. I admire the simplicity of the design, the absence of wood on the exterior, the welcoming ambience of the accommodations, its sporting character. I can’t wait to take the helm again.

Contact: MJM Yachts, (617) 723-3629; www.mjmyachts.com.