Design No. 124 was designed as a full blown IOR Race boat with emphasis on light weather performance and with careful consideration to proportions to ensure better performance downwind than current IOR boats, while at the same time maintaining upwind ability. The commission came from an owner who had enjoyed several seasons of racing a boat built to Design No. 54 with an enlarged rig, which gave his boat awesome downwind performance. His aim was to maintain this advantage as much as possible and still produce a good all round performer.

Farr has produced a boat with beam to length ratio and displacement lower, and sail area to displacement and sail area to wetted surface ratios higher, than currently present in IOR fleets. Farr made extensive use of Velocity Prediction computer programs during design to fine tune both the basic proportions and keel shapes.

The boat has a lofty fractional rig and sports a heavily tapered upper section with diamonds at the hounds. Geometry and sizing of the diamond system has been determined from research work in this area for CERAMCO NEW ZEALAND - Design No. 90.

Construction was been detailed in Kevlar, S Glass and E Glass reinforced skins sandwiching a PVC foam core. Kevlar reinforcing is included in the form of a new woven roving developed by Dupont especially for this application.

The first boat built to Design No. 124 - FREE FALL - was originally campaigned out of St. Petersburg, Florida.

PHOTOS Click to enlarge.