RED LION

Designer’s Notes

Farr dominance of the World 1 Ton Championship in 1977 centered around Design No. 64 - RED LION. This boat along with other boats to the same basic design with minor variations in rigs, deck layouts and engine installation filled 1st (RED LION), 2nd (MR JUMPA), 3rd (SMIR-NOFF-AGEN) and 5th (JENNY H) places in the World Championships that year. These designs featured a long, fine, easily driven hull with very little obvious rating distortion, and a clean aft which, while accepting a rating penalty, or rather foregoing a possible rating advantage, seemed to allow the hulls to reach high speeds very easily in reaching conditions. Under these conditions the boats sailed well above the performance their ratings indicated they would. These yachts were also the first Farr designs to use centerboards (actually drop keels, as they had considerable ballast in them), which not only took advantage of a rating loophole to reduce rating, thus allowing more length of hull, but also gave very efficient upwind performance in all conditions. Because the Rule discouraged weight in centerboards, stability was largely dependent on internal ballast which required slightly higher displacement to obtain a higher ballast ratio, but this in turn allowed more sail area to give improved light weather performance. In their day these boats were virtually unbeatable, and represented a major advance in yacht design for ocean racing.