Singlehanded trap for lightweights

Originally posted by haroosh Can you buy a farr3.7 ready built and ready to sail in the uk today?

You can buy anything you like if you cross any of a number of competent boat builder's palms with silver. But off the shelf, no, not to my knowledge. Anyone who can build Moths or Cherubs will certainly do a competent job of the Farr.

Cost, there are an awful lot of pieces of string to measure involved.

It depends what you build her out of of course. If you go wood then plywood for the hull won't be too bad, the stripwood will be a bit more of an issue, lately I've been wondering about glass coated cedar stringers as being light, readily available and fairly cheap in which case you'd only need expensive stuff for gunwhales. As you can see from the sections there are a lot of stringers: Farr boats of that era were arguably the best lightweight boats ever built and you are getting all that knowledge, although it means going to be a more sophisticated build then a Solo or something.

Rig foils and gear will be the major lump as they always are for a homebuild.

Handling and so on: Jack knows and will tell you more but I'd guess vaguely Laser speed but much more lively in a breeze. Its not a bad speed to be for inland sailing because you don't sail out of the front of gusts into no wind all the time like you do with a fast boat.

I have a Farr Cherub of very similar design, albeit a fair bit more rag, and she's in my opinion a perfect delight to sail singlehanded, even in the light stuff.


Edited by JimC - 01 Nov 11 at 8:16pm

Originally posted by Medway Maniac A smaller hull makes sense.  Simply using a smaller rig on a bigger hull risks creating a dog in light winds when it's all about sail area/wetted area. My only real gripes with the Farr 3.7 are a suspicion that it might be a bit too small and correspondingly twitchy, and that it's short waterline length will have a slow hull speed for the displacement conditions so common inland. Also, it does look to me very boxy/Solo/60's, not that that should matter, but still...

Due to all sorts of reasons I have so far only really sailed my Farr in lightish wind, and she / he (New Zealand boats are he's) seems to slip along quite nicely. Speed wise, the general view is a bit faster than a laser in average sailing conditions. When the wind pipes up I think you would leave them a fair way behind. Add a kite and the speed will go up corespondingly. As for twitchyness in breeze, you'll have to wait for the next Y&Y issue for Pete Bartons test sail review. I can't give it all away on the forum!

and have we forgotten:

No I'm not actually interested in one. It was merely a question to establish if the boat has a builder and hence any chance of growing. Looks doubtful to me????
I also must admit I think the hull look incredibly dated. However I'm sure it s a joy to sail.
Getting back to lightweights boats the post on the y and y homepage about the streaker shows theres alot of interest there. Great for the class...

I dunno about incredibly dated: the hull shape is state of the art NZ early 1970s, which makes it roughly equivalent to 1995 UK designs.