Design #151 - 42'11" (13.1m) IOR Racing Yacht

Admiral's Cup trials and the yacht remains very competitive with little or no changes for the Admiral's Cup. The design features are also ideal for the SORC so it was logical to use the same basic design with minor changes for David Williford's "Snake Oil" which won First in Class in the January competition.

It was very gratifying from Farr's point of view to see "Drakes Prayer" win the Australian Admiral's Cup trials immediately after "Snake Oil" comfortably won her class in the SORC. Both boats have shown exceptional speed in all conditions with no apparent weak points at all and devastating speed both tight and broad reaching.

At the time of design, the rule changes for November 1984 were not decided but the design team was aware that increased stability would be encouraged. With this in mind, Farr developed a boat slightly narrower compared to length with stability coming from a significantly lower center of gravity. The stern is a bit narrower than Farr's One Ton designs to reduce rating, thereby rounding out performance versus rating more in favor of light weather. The ends are more balanced and the hull form is therefore one that is powerful, extremely easily driven, with very low wetted area and easy handling characteristics.

The keel is typical of Farr's recent approach for very high aspect ratio, minimum area approach with sections adjusted for increased external ballast and low center of gravity.

On top of this concept the Farr design office added a large, but not extreme, fractional rig giving an SHR of 16.1 - maximum without penalty.

The result is a boat that is slightly smaller and lighter than the average, compared to its rating, but also extremely fast for its rating in all conditions.

Construction is a Kevlar sandwich utilizing PVD and Nomex cores with Kevlar/S Glass framing. Farr prefers Kevlar as it gives outstanding impact strength and careful design with thick cores and very rigid transverse framing produces a structure with acceptably diminutive longitudinal deflections, 18/" (3mm) in this case at