Titus Canby, a 27-foot (8.23m) cruising boat designed by Bruce Farr in 1972. In her first season, she won the Pacific Half Ton Trophy and established Farr's reputation as a designer.

Photographer unknown, Sea Spray Collection, New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa / Portrait: courtesy of Farr Yacht Design

Travelodge NZ, designed for Kim and Terry McDell by Bruce Farr, won the 1974 18-Footer World Championships. Nine of the 13 entrants that year were Farr designs.

Photographer unknown, Sea Spray Collection, New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa

Leopard, a Farr 110 ICAP, crosses the finish line first in the Rolex Fastnet Race. This 30-metre high-performance ocean-racing yacht was designed in 2005.

Photograph by Carlo Borlenghi/Rolex, reproduced courtesy of KPMS

BRUCE FARR OBE

(1949–)

Bruce Farr is one of New Zealand’s best-known, and internationally most successful, designers of racing and cruising yachts.

Design prodigy

Auckland-born Bruce Farr was an avid sailor from childhood. He was 11 when he designed and built his first boat. Throughout his teenage years, he continued to build small centreboarders for himself, his family and friends.

After leaving school, and a brief period designing and building boats, Farr worked for several years with Jim Young, the renowned boat designer and builder. Young said of Farr: ‘He was a top-class yachtsman … a boat builder … He had vision. Plus he was extremely focused. Combine all that with … near-genius mathematical ability … Bruce had the lot.’

Farr set up his own design and boatbuilding business in 1970. He soon established a reputation for his fast, light and reliable yachts, including several national and four world champion 18-foot skiffs. He also developed his first successful keelboat designs, such as Titus Canby, Fantzipantz and Gerontius.

BRUCE FARR

Design for racing and cruising

From 1974, Farr concentrated solely on design. He focused on keelboats, making innovative use of lightweight wood construction and materials like fibreglass.

Farr’s designs gained an international reputation through a stream of successes in offshore races in the 1970s, both in New Zealand and overseas, then in round-the-world events like the Whitbread.

Farr also had success designing for recreational and learner sailors, with a series of speedy and reliable cruising trailer yachts, the Farr 3.7 dinghy, various larger production-built keelboats such as Farr 727, Farr 920 and Farr 1020, as well as many custom keelboat designs.

BRUCE FARR

Farr Yacht Design, USA

In 1980, engineer Russell Bowler joined Farr, and in 1981 they set up Farr Yacht Design in the United States to be nearer potential customers. Their America’s Cup yachts of the late 1980s sparked a design revolution in that event.

Today, thousands of yachts built from Farr Yacht Design plans are cruising and racing in the waters of the world. Farr’s yachts have an impressive record of wins in a wide variety of racing events, including over 40 world championships.

ON DISPLAY

See Bruce Farr’s Mammoth in the Gallery of Yachts section. This was the Restricted Moth Class yacht he built and sailed to victory when he was 16.

DISCOVER MORE

Stories about the Farr designs are in the America's Cup and Going Global sections.