FARR 38, 38ft Cruiser

Designer’s Notes

The cruising yachts we design are good, all-round, Rule-free sailboats that are safe, fast, and easy to handle. We have developed an alternative style for the future; something that is not steeped in tradition. They have features that are good in racing boats but are great for cruising boats; like, SPEED, the ability to go to weather...those things are really important in a cruising yacht. What should a decent boat be like? The primary consideration is safety: it must be strong with high stability and therefore a low center of gravity. Our cruising boats have the ballast concentrated a lot lower in the keel than our IOR boats because they are not restricted by the IOR's center of gravity factors. Handling ease necessitates as much waterline length as possible and a moderate beam - that means WIDE compared to 30 years ago. Our hull forms call for moderate displacement to ensure great strength; a fine bow, powerful sections, and a broad stern which guarantees high speed reaching and no tendency to round up. A powerful hull like the Farr 38 combined with a good percentage of ballast set low in a moderate keel makes a very stiff boat and ensures excellent windward performance - particularly in rough weather. The rig reflects our latest developments for ease of handling in high performance cruising boats. A masthead rig is chosen and the fore-triangle is very small and of high aspect. The mainsail is very large for a masthead rig. This results in many of the advantages of a fractional rig combined with the simplicity and reliability of a masthead rig. One of the most significant misconceptions held by some cruising sailors is the heavy equals safe. I think many sailors have entrenched concepts that are just out of date: such as, the best cruising boat must be very heavy and unable to sail well to windward. Another misconception is that anything fast isn't good - or safe. We feel that speed is probably more important in a cruising boat than it is for a racing boat! The speed of a racing boat is always relative to others racing the same course - and it really doesn't matter if they are all in slow bathtubs since one of them will still win by sailing better or smarter. The cruiser on the other hand, has a lot of very real demands for speed: he's going sailing, he wants to get somewhere, the faster he does it the happier and safer he's going to be because he can pick his weather condition. Our feeling is that cruising yachts ought to be FAST yachts.