SUNSITE

Enter Farrier: In the world of trailerable trimaran designs none can beat the dedication and contribution of Ian Farrier. His world renowned designs are reported to be fast, safe, comfortable, easy to handle and all round very pleasant to sail. Farrier has been in the trimaran business since the beginning of the 70’s when trimarans were still a relatively undeveloped concept. Now after almost 40 years of designing and supporting builders, both amature and professional Farrier sports a portfolio with a wide range of meticulously designed foldable trimarans from 39 feet down to his latest, the 22 foot sport tri.

The man
A New Zealander by birth Farrier started sailing multihulls in his early twenties when he was still an engineering student. Having looked for a suitable boat to go cruising he eventually stumbled upon and bought an unfinished trimaran. Once completed Farrier lunched the boat in 1969 and sailed it from his Christchurch hometown to Auckland in northern New Zealand through some rough winter storms. Farrier found that the boat has some design limitations which made him not trust the boat to do a long voyage and decided to jump ship to join a 38′ keelboat headed for Tonga. During this voyage to Tonga Farrier found that sailing the keelboat was not only uncomfortable compared to the trimaran but also not as safe. Furthermore handling the keelboat was harder work and to top it all off the performance was not even close.

During this voyage Farrier decided multihulls, and specifically trimarans offered a superior sailing experience compared to keelboats. Farrier moved on to Brisbane, Australia where the monohull trailer sailer movement was in full swing. He started working on a trailerable trimaran design named Trailertri and completed the prototype in 1974. During the design process Farrier invented a folding system for the outer hulls to easily reduce the with of the boat for trailering. This system, the “Farrier Folding System-TM” was patented and is still today an essential component of Farrier’s trimaran designs.

The boats
Farrier Marine, Ian Farrier’s design office now offeres seven currently supported designs for trimarans, five of which are for the amature builder.

• F-22 new
• F-82
• F-32 new
• F-33 (prof.)
• F-35 (prof.)
• F-36
• F-39

Each new design has been built from experience gained form the previous design. Farriers designs have therefore been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Most of his boats are built on the same concept but range in size and purpose. Continuous improvement is the epitome of quality control and 40 years of that has earned Farrier the title “The King of the Tri”.

Older discontinued designs include the F-24, F-25, F-27, F-28, F-31, F-9, Trailerati 18, Trailerati 680, Trailerati 720, Command 10 and Tramp.

The awards
Farrier is the only designer to have been included in the American Sailing Hall of Fame for a trimaran design and one of only two for a multihull. His F-27 built by Corsair was selected as “… a breakthrough design that made a tremendous impact on sailing by giving owners the rewards of multihull sailing without the hassle of a beam too wide for marinas and trailers”.

The Farrier designs have also earned sailing magazine “boat of the year” awards. The first of which was F-24MkII which won CruisingWorld’s boat of the year in 1996.

The comments
Farrier boats have a thriving community of boat owners. The F-Boat group on Yahoo has over 3000 members, many of whom have built their own boats.

The building process of a Farrier tri
And now for the fun part. The F-boats began as designs for amature builders and after a period of a focus on professional building Farrier has now returned to focusing on the amature builder. This is great news form me because I would not have money to buy a professionally built Farrier for many-a-years to come. However, if I build one my self I just might be able to manage getting one in perhaps a couple of years.

Building a boat is no simple task, especially when you have previously never attempted any serious building. However, many a such individuals have taken on the challenge and managed to complete a decent boat within a reasonable timeframe. This gives me hope that I just might become a part of this boat-builder elite.

Amature boatbuilding comes in at various stages. Some designers, such as Farrier will offer to ship the boat ready made requiering only assembly. This is the next step down from “sailaway” or the concept of just stepping aboard and just sailing the boat away from the factory. Self assembly is not much of a building process though for the owner and will be much more expensive. The next step down to basics is having the hulls factory made and shipped to you including most of the components needed to complete the build. This is a very sensible option for a first time builder. The hulls are the most time consuming part of the build and perhaps also the most crucial. The next step down is having the panels cut out by the factory and shipped to you. You then take it from there and build the boat your self. This will require you to do most of the work your self but saving a lot of time strip planking or starting completely from scratch. This is a very practical option as you will be saving both time and wasted resouces by having your panles computer cut. The lowest starting level though is just printing out the design and starting from there.

Farrier has recommended to home builder using a method called vertical foam stripping. This involves laying down foam panels side by side and then strengthening them with fiberglass and epoxy. This is meant to be a fast and easy way to build your own boat.

Referneces
Rafale, a homebuilt F-9 [1]
Farrier Marine [2]