Ian Farrier

Ian Farrier is the reason the trailerable trimaran works. The New Zealand-born engineer patented the folding system that lets amas swing inboard for the road — the mechanism under every Corsair ever built, starting with his F-27, and under every F-boat built to his own plans after he and the yard went separate ways. Farrier died in 2017; his drawings kept going to sea without him, which is roughly the definition of a designer who got it right.

Boats carrying his own name on our shelf: 16 live, from $12,500 to $232,923, spanning designs from 1980 to hulls finished as recently as 2025 — home-completed and yard-built F-boats both, since Farrier sold plans as happily as boats. The one we hold the full file on is the sharpest of them: the F-32SR, his folding idea stripped for racing — while his gentler thinking lives on the F-24 and the Corsair 27 pages next door.

The honest note on buying a Farrier: "built to a Farrier design" spans everything from immaculate factory boats to garage projects of variable courage — the plans were superb, the execution is the variable, and the survey is where the two get told apart. His whole argument — that three hulls, folded, beat one hull moored — is really the cruising question in mechanical form; the evidence sails at the trimarans for sale.