Bruce
Farr
(1949)
yacht designer
Bruce Farr is the president and founder of the company Farr Yacht Design Ltd, world's leader in the production of racing and cruising sailboats.
Born in Auckland, in New Zealand, in 1949, he has started his activity designing, building, and sailing dinghy classes during the period between 1960 and 1970.
In 1973 thanks to the success he obtained in the competitive 18 foot skiff class, he could start working fulltime as yacht designer. Towards the end of the period between 1970 and 1980 he realized that his business needed to establish a presence in the United States in order to become accessible to the
greatest part of the world's market. For this reason in 1981 he opened an office in Annapolis, in Maryland (US), where his company is currently based. In his new office he had a lot of success with both US and European clients.
Bruce Farr has had a huge impact on the yacht design world by incrementing
it with innovative solutions which are at the same time
simple in their style and highly effective in their performance. His popularity is due
to a long list of successful projects like the IOR and IMS
classes, the sailboats for Whitbread, and many other models including
Platu 25, MUMM 30 and FARR 40.
In 1987, with Laurie Davidson and Ron Holland, he designed K27 for the
America's Cup. It was the first time that a boat for this
competition had been realised in fibreglass. The sailboat was therefore
given the nickname "Plastic Fantastic". Due to this success, towards the end of
the period between 1980 and 1990 he had reached a level of popularity he had never had before.
Bruce Farr realised how important it was to take into consideration the
technological evolution in the design field, and decided to adopt CAD (Computer Aided Design)
technology to deal with every aspect that the complex process of designing sailboats involves.
The French boat builders Beneteau and Jeanneau noticed his talents and in 1988
forged a long-term relationship with his company.
Since 1990 Bruce Farr's boats have consistently dominated IMS events.
In 1990 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire. Among his other awards is
the Science and Technology Silver Medal from the Royal Society of New Zealand which
recognized his significant contributions to yacht design.
Farr Yacht Design has renewed his work contract with ORACLE BMW Racing Team for
the next America's Cup in 2007.
related
subjects:
Yacht
design
links:
www.farrdesign.com
www.farr-pilothouseyachts.com
