Overview
The Farr 50 Pilot House is Farr Yacht Design’s number 373, drawn in 1996 and built by BSI Marine in Sweden from 1998. Farr designed it as a liveaboard bluewater cruiser for a couple, with room for guests.
Design and Construction
It has a fin keel with lead ballast and a spade rudder, 50.46 ft overall on a 43.86 ft waterline, 15.42 ft of beam and 7.55 ft of draft. Displacement is about 37,480 lb with about 13,230 lb of ballast. The keel-stepped three-spreader Selden mast has a removable inner forestay, so the boat can be sailed as a cutter, and the plan gives about 1,238 sq ft. Farr kept large lockers in the bow and stern for cruising stores. Boat Sales International of Hamble commissioned the design, and the boats were built by Najad in Sweden. The hull is solid fiberglass below the waterline and balsa-cored above it, with a sump at the keel stub. Tankage is 225 gallons of fuel and 156 of water.
Buyers Notes
John Neal rates it 4 of 5 and calls it powerful, fast and well built, a boat that holds its value very well. Skip Pond expected daily runs around 200 miles and found the pilothouse a secure, dry watch station, but noted the fine, flat forward sections may pound upwind, the boat has little lateral plane for heaving to, access to the port side of the engine looks hard, and there is no wet locker near the cockpit.
Yachting Monthly reported in 2001 that Farr 50 number 15 had just been delivered to a Dutch owner with a carbon rig by Nordic Masts and North 3DL Marathon sails, so owners could specify a lighter rig than the standard Selden mast. The same report notes that most of the larger Farr Pilot House yachts were built with in-mast furling mainsails.
