This design was conceived in the wake of Farr's very successful One Tonners which dominated the 1984 Southern Cross Cup in Australia, the 1984 Pan Am Clipper Cup and European contests throughout the year.

 

The goal of the design effort was to produce a larger boat for Peter Kurts of Australia which had the outstanding upwind and reaching qualities that Farr's One Tonners possessed in moderate and strong wind conditions and dramatically strengthen the performance in light running conditions where the One Tonners were consciously trading off in their performance. In short, Farr has designed a boat that will be fully competitive in all conditions with particularly strong reaching and upwind performance capability to suit the very broad range of wind and course conditions off Australia's New South Wales coast. High performance was proven by winning Australia's  Admiral's Cup trials and the yacht remains very competitive with little or no changes for the Admiral's Cup. The design features are also ideal for the SORC so it was logical to use the same basic design with minor changes for David Williford's "Snake Oil" which won First in Class in the January competition.

 

It was very gratifying from Farr's point of view to see "Drakes Prayer" win the Australian Admiral's Cup trials immediately after "Snake Oil" comfortably won her class in the SORC. Both boats have shown exceptional speed in all conditions with no apparent weak points at all and devastating speed both tight and broad reaching.

 

At the time of design, the rule changes for November 1984 were not decided but the design team was aware that increased stability would be encouraged. With this in mind, Farr developed a boat slightly narrower compared to length with stability coming from a significantly lower center of gravity. The stern is a bit narrower than Farr's One Ton designs to reduce rating, thereby rounding out performance versus rating more in favor of light weather. The ends are more balanced and the hull form is therefore one that is powerful, extremely easily driven, with very low wetted area and easy handling characteristics.

 

The keel is typical of Farr's recent approach for very high aspect ratio, minimum area approach with sections adjusted for increased external ballast and low center of gravity.

 

On top of this concept the Farr design office added a large, but not extreme, fractional rig giving an SHR of 16.1 - maximum without penalty.

 

The result is a boat that is slightly smaller and lighter than the average, compared to its rating, but also extremely fast for its rating in all conditions.

 

Construction is a Kevlar sandwich utilizing PVD and Nomex cores with Kevlar/S Glass framing. Farr prefers Kevlar as it gives outstanding impact strength and careful design with thick cores and very rigid transverse framing produces a structure with acceptably diminutive longitudinal deflections, 18/" (3mm) in this case at full runner tension.

 

The weight is equivalent or better than using carbon fibre, the cost is significantly less and structural behavior in an overload situation is fare more acceptable.

 

In both cases resins with delayed setting times were used to enable multiple layers of reinforcing to be layed and clamped with a vacuum bag. This produced smooth laminates with little fairing required at fabric laps minimizing the weight of fairing compound over the inside and outside of hull and deck.