Tatiana
Bahamas

"It is when you are riding out your first gale in a boat you have built yourself that you wonder about some of the doubtful workmanship that went into her."
- John Guzzwell, Trekka Round the World

Chronology

2008: return to San Francisco Bay
2007: Bahamas, Miami, refitting, and Lake Erie (Sandusky, Put-in-Bay, sailing with Bob and Sue and finally some shots of the boat from the water)
2006: beams, assembly, and launch, plus transport to Florida
2005: from final glass on the hull to completely painted
2004: new daggerboard, rudder, moving to Ohio
2003: new workshop in Jersey City
2002: CMMs assembled, more parts in a friend's garage in SF
2001: CMM parts, daggerboard, flat parts, in my garage in San Francisco

FAQs:

On the following pages are some pictures of my build process.  The boat was built, in fits and starts, between 2001 and 2006, on two coasts and in between, and in the U.S. and Canada.  The longest gaps were from mid-2002 to July of 2003, when I didn't have a workshop, and from June to November of 2004, when I moved and then rebuilt my garage.  Construction took a great leap forward when I bought two complete floats and an almost-complete hull in 2004, which probably saved me a year.  The hull was glassed completely on the inside and the port outside, and had enough glass on the starboard outside to be transported on the trailer.  I started working on the main hull in the fall of 2004 and within a year got to the point where I was painting and installing hardware.  It didn't hurt that I had a whole basement full of previously built boat parts, ready to be installed.
Here are some stats that compare the Farrier to my previous boat, an Ericson 28+, as well as some other multis and monohulls.


 Ericson
 Farrier
 Seacart
 Melges
LOA
 28'6"
 32'
 30'
 31'10"
LWL
 24'2"
 31'

Beam
 10'6"
 23'4" 21'10"
 9'10"
Displacement
 7500
 3450
 2353
 3900
Main 200
 408

Jib
 224
 230

Total SA
 424
 638
 667
 699
SA/D
 17.71
 44.71
 60.33
 45.14

The difference in Sail Area to Displacement ratio explains why we putter around at 5-6 knots in the Ericson, and hit 12 knots the second time we sailed the Farrier.  The Seacart looks like a Farrier with a pod in the center instead of a hull.  While Farrier's boats are never meant to be sailed with the main hull out of the water, the Seacart obviously is.  It will take a few years for sailing in double digits to become boring enough for me to sign up for that ride.

Top speed to date was just under 18 knots, in 20+ knots of wind, close reaching, in Lake Erie.  Here's a link to some videos by Mat.
We hit over 17 knots, in a 26+ knot gust on San Francisco Bay.  Max sustained speed so far (over the approx. 10 second GPS sample period) is 15.6 knots.  Single reefed main and jib.  Couldn't really say what sail trim was like because I was just trying to hold on and make sure nothing broke.  Plus it was like sailing into a firehose.

Because Ian Farrier's building techniques are relatively advanced, there aren't a lot of books that will actually tell you how to build a boat this way, but there are still some that will give you lots of helpful advice.  Some of my favorites, and the ones I think most relevant to modern composite boat construction are:
  • Fiberglass Boatbuilding for Amateurs (Ken Hankinson)
  • The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction (Meade Gougeon)
  • Boatbuilding with Baltek Duracore (David Brown, useful even if you're not using Duracore)
  • Understanding Aircraft Composite Construction (Zeke Smith)
  • Skene's Elements of Yacht Design (ed. Francis S. Kinney)
  • Boatbuilding (H. Chappelle)
  • Any and all of Thomas F. Jones' books
Acknowledgments