The Successor

There she is on our mooring. JPK 9.60 Keneil Ker.

FarrOut Sold

FarrOut has made her trip back to Scotland and is settled with her new owners Jonathan and Gavin Dickie. We wish them and her a successful future. Really going to miss her.

Meanwhile the FarrOut team are looking for a new boat. But where can you go after a boat as perfect as her?

On her new mooring

I guess this is the end of this blog. As a memory, here is her description from the Apollo Duck advert:


Great example of this proven racer/cruiser. IRC optimised to be even more competitive.
The Laser 28 was designed by Bruce Farr to provide the performance of a much larger boat. The functional interior sleeps 5/6 with heads, galley and nav station.

She is a delight to sail with her hull shape allowing planing in the right conditions. Her practical deck layout and addition of assymetric spinnaker option makes her ideal for short handed passage making as well as round the cans fully crewed racing.

Is there a more practical and competitive boat in the 28’-30’ range available for this budget?

2015 Weymouth & Portland (YCW) Spring IRC Class 4 - 1st
2015 Weymouth SC Double Handed series - 1st
2015 Weymouth & Portland (YCW) Autumn IRC Class 4 - 1st
2015 Weymouth & Portland (YCW) Winter IRC Class 4 - 1st

That's about right for an epitaph from this owner at least.

Small IRC winner

Cruising through the Sailing Anarchy forums I came across this discussion:

Small IRC Winner

It takes 8 posts before the Laser 28 gets mentioned? So glad that we knew the Laser 28's potential when we were looking for a new boat. FarrOut is a fabulous boat and looking forward to sailing her as soon as I can get home (currently working in Kazakhstan).

The decision to replace our GK24 with a Laser 28 came to me one sunny morning  / afternoon / whatever it was? I was too tired to know. We were tied up against the waiting pontoon in St Peter Port Guernsey after a gruelling night race from Cowes. We were racing my friend's Figaro 1 "Rattler" and had put a lot of effort in and were hoping for as decent a placing as her rating would allow.

We'd probably been tied up around 10 minutes when along came the Laser 28 "Lazy Bear", now known as "Moondog". It was pretty impressive that this 28' boat had made the passage in this sort of time. I was in love........

The day that the money cleared in the bank from the sail of "Chuckles Too" our GK24, Stu, Steve and I were on a flight to Scotland to view FarrOut.

That's what we like to see.

With me stuck in Saudi Arabia, team FarrOut seem to be doing alright for themselves. At least I can bask in the reflected glory. Good luck today everybody and will you let me onboard when I'm back next week?

Season Start

The season started well for FarrOut last sunday with a win against Saskia VII in a 2 boat windward/leeward match. The first of the WSC spring series, but a poor turnout - where is everyone? Time to get out of hibernation.

Go on Nathan and Sam!

Fireball Worlds

Magazine Review 1986

The Birth of FarrOut - on the Hamble

So I was anti-fouling the boat on friday, and a bloke came into the yard and said "Farr Out, I remember seeing her built - 30 years ago". Obviously this got my attention; it turns out that Keith was in procurement in Performance Sailcraft in Banbury, Oxfordshire in the 80's. Here's some things that he told me about FarrOut and the UK built Laser 28s.

• She was built by Hedley Bewes on the Hamble. This happened after they had issues with the first builders.
• She's always been called FarrOut.
• Flying Fish was the demonstrator.
• They were built to order. A lot of items were bespoke. This explains why our pulpit and forward bulkhead are different from other boats.
• They were built in glass fibre and not Kevlar like the Canadian boats. All resins were isopthalic.
• The hull was vac infused. The deck hand laid.
• He said that sourcing the bi-keel for that variant was really difficult. Ours is fin keel thank God!
• The spars were bought as extrusions from Alcan and rigged locally.
• He seemed to remember the new owner of Farr Out didn't like the life raft supplied and they had to change it.

We looked at the hull number together, Keith said that it wouldn't be very high - HCB868A. So presumably number 8 built in 1986.

He still has an original sales brochure and the marketing video on VHS. Hopefully I can get some copies and post them up here.

He's never been afloat in a Laser 28, so maybe we can change that for him this year.

Graphics in her Oban days.

Breezy Sunday Morning. You got to be in it to win it.

It's been a while since I've made any blog posts, I guess both there hasn't been much to talk about and I'm really busy these days with two small children. But yesterday's race, the ultimate of the WSC winter series was really something quite special.

The forecast was pretty bad and it kept everyone away. In fact only three boats ventured into the bay with Paul Barford's "Sole Bay" going back in as there was no-one to race in their class. That left FarrOut and the J97 "Saskia VII", so a head to head competition with a boat that had already won the winter series with almost straight bullets - no pressure.

The RO set a windward leeward with a spreader mark at the top so that they could finish us near the harbour. Nobody was going to set a kite in that breeze so the goose-wing was a good idea.

FarrOut won the start with Saskia having trouble with their jib sheets, it was going to all be about boat handling. They got to the windward mark in front of us, being bigger and faster, but we were on their tail on the downwind. We shook out our reef for the downwind and then didn't put it back in for the beat. Funnily enough we were less overpowered with a flattened (brand new) full main that with the reef that had some belly due to the reef point positioning.

Stuart drove excellently with Steve kicking arse on the mainsheet meaning that we were working over the top of the J97 upwind in 30 odd knots - unbelievable.

With a mistake causing a jib wrap to Saskia in their "chicken gybe" manoeuvre. We overtook, having gybed in a big gust while we had speed. We held out, to beat them over the water.

I can't think of a better way of ending the season. Well done to all crew, we can win in an old, cheap small boat by not making mistakes and by the other boats losing rather than us winning. I think that brand new mainsail might have helped - well done Hyde Sails!

Single Handed 2 - 2 mins 17 sec corrected!

A trophy at last! As the single handed 1 had been cancelled, it all rested on single handed 2.

FarrOut was blisteringly fast and the JS9000 RWH didn't really get that far away from me. The rest of the fleet were left behind. I was apprehensive to start off with, mostly about getting her back on the mooring...but it was a really good sail and I really enjoyed myself, even if I had no-one to talk to! I'll definately race her single handed again if I can.

That's everyone else behind!

August Series - Monday 12th - Doesn't get much more fun than this.

So impressed with FarrOut and her crew at the moment. We came out for this race in 15-20 knots with a clean bottom and a very strong crew. Talking about our start issues we identified that we'd want front row committee boat, doesn't everybody? The thing is how to get it.... We knew that the Sigma 33 "Scoline" would beat in to the committee boat shutting the door on everyone above the layline. So we knew that we had to be to leeward of them to take control, there was enough wind to have speed to take control.

What ensued was an exiting match race start which commenced during the squib start 10 minutes before ours. We tried to keep below and on their quarter. It was successful and we caused enough trouble that we were clear on the start and they were out of position. In fact we were able to gybe away last minute and push up "Effusion" on the line getting us away clear.

A great race with very little error by us other than handing it to the Beneteau 31.7 "Crystal Voyager", or Crystal Meth to you and I. They haven't got an IRC cert so we don't really care. They have got brand new Sanders D4 sails though so we'll let them have the 15 seconds corrected that they beat us by on PY.

Well done to everyone for a great sail. Anybody have any ideas where we could have got that 15 seconds back? I know I do. Just great to be out on the water on a night like that and so sad to be missing Weymouth Regatta in our current form.

August Series at WSC

We might have had some glorious weather in the UK for a few weeks there but the combination of high pressure and a lot of sun meant that we had evening racing with zero breeze. This started to become very frustrating for sailors though not understood by the majority population. I was very glum for a while back there!

Fortunately we seem to be having a period now of lovely moderate breezes and these have coincided with the August series which started on Monday. The first race was eventful as we were missing some key crew members meaning that people were out of their normal positions. We also did the classic of doing so well on the start and first beat that we were first at the windward mark and then started sailing to the wrong mark, a quick gybe and we were back going where we should!

Monday's breeze was very shifty out of the NW and the windward mark was a horrible place to be, this combined with poor driving by me and some other issues meant we ended up in irons the second time we got there. Very poor and ended up with a coming together with another boat. Out of this and an RS600 decided to capsize at the mark. Race over for us really.

Thursday's race looked much more promising as the 240 deg direction at 13-15 kts is perfect for stability in our bay. We were a little early for our port tack start so pulled a 360 turn and tacked over to starboard to lee bow the fleet. Stayed in clean air and what do you know...the Race Officer set a ridiculous asymmetric course. Lovely, only problem was that we'd ended up with 8 people on board which was too many and as it's all about who's got the cleanest hull at this time of year, we were too slow on the beats.

A great enjoyable evening resulting in a 4th place, we didn't manage to get in front of Scoline but it's great battling with them. It has to be said that they had 9 on board!

Here's a video of Magnum 3 from Poole pulling a gybe peel for all fans of the foredeck:

These Don't come up for Sale very often!

http://yachts.apolloduck.co.uk/display.phtml?aid=314980

Mast Rake

Future Foredeck. I'm a proud Dad.