farrier century
With 140 F-22 plans sold and over 100 on the deposit waiting list for production F-22s, our friends at Farrier Marine our understandably pretty stoked. Here’s an update.
The production F-22 continues to progress, with float hull plugs now complete, and the main hull plug started. All the pieces are slowly falling into place and it is good to know that we will soon be building hulls, followed by complete boats. Latest photos are now on the ‘F-22 Availability’ web page here.
Still no deadlines or promises for availability, as progress can be been slowed by various other tasks, but it has been important for the F-22 to be self financing in the early stages, to avoid a large development debt. This has crippled many boat building companies in the past to where the company fails, or product can be badly compromised by too many short cuts, so continuing to be profitable has always been an essential requirement for Farrier Marine.
Float plugs were built personally to ensure every little detail was exactly right for efficient and easy production of the flangeless floats. Few designers actually build their own boats, but I have found ‘hands on’ work essential to check out every aspect and have now built 7 of my designs. This includes the original F-27, from the hull plugs to implementing and campaigning the complete boat, which resulted in a ‘Hall of Fame Sailboat’, so such close involvement and attention to detail has proven to be very beneficial.
Note that there are many new aspects and features that we can’t show yet, so the web site photos are being somewhat restricted. Much is also being done differently with the F-22 to keep costs down, and one example is the float plug (used to make float molds), which is epoxy foam core. This means it is light but very stable, and the two halves can be stored by hanging on a wall. This takes away a space issue and the overhead from having to rent space just to store molds and plugs, something that has been a significant problem in the past, with the large number of molds required for a trimaran (57 molds were needed for the F-27).
There are now over 140 F-22s being built or sailing from plans, but, with the imminent availability of kit hulls, plans have now been taken off the market, They are to be replaced by the F-22 kit, where hulls are purchased ready made for assembly only, and it will no longer be possible to build hulls from plans. The kit will then be joined by the full production F-22 in 2011, and there are already over 100 sailors now wishing to put down a deposit once they start being accepted, and these numbers have doubled from what they were 2 months ago.
The F-22 development time has been long, which is frustrating for those who want a boat now, and it would be much more satisfying if the F-22 could have been done quicker, but folding trimarans are much more difficult and complex to develop than a monohull. There are two to three times the parts, so everything has to be done better and much more efficiently in order to achieve a very competitive price. Many new things are also being implemented that have not been done before, and this just takes time to do right. However, availability is getting closer.
Latest F-22 News can be seen here, and more new photos of existing F-22s sailing are on the F-22 main website here.
Farrier F-32 Racer
The first F-32SR racer being built by Jerry Fiat continues to progress well, and this boat will be campaigned by Randy Smyth once complete. More details on the circular lifting foils have now also been added to the website. More information on either the F-22 or F-32SR is available from:
Ian Farrier
Farrier Marine (NZ) Ltd
Farrier Marine, Inc
Ph. 64 3 3386502
Mob 64 21 110 8109
