Bryan & Sarah's Farrier F-22 - Kamehameha

Bryan and Sarah both have found a love of sailing.  To us it is about the journey.  It is the entire experience.  Not only being out on the water, but appreciating mother nature, using water as a road and wind as our engine.  Most boaters on our lakes are motor boaters and they just seem to use their boats as docks or floating islands and are only briefly on the water.  We prefer harnessing the wind, instead of a loud motor, and enjoying our sailing journeys, not just full throttling a motor to get to a destination.

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Bryan's History:

Growing up my father loved his small little 14' Starcraft boat in which he would want to go fishing on, and while he would go fishing, I'd prefer swimming.  In my teenage years to early 20s I would occasionally go kayaking with my sister using her kayaks.  Once I was out on my own I satiated my desire to be out on the water in kayaking.  If you know anything about me, you'd know I try to find one tool that works for everything, so in this case I wanted to find a kayak that could handle anything, and also be shared with another. 

 

I settled on a 21' tandem kayak, Wilderness Skookumchuck.  Over the 6 years of ownership I slowly transformed it into a kayak sailor, after stumbling initially on the KayakSailor website, adding a Pacific Action 2.2m^2 briefly midship (which was my setup for an end to end Lake George [32 miles] in an 11 hour period of kayak sailing) before swapping that out for a Balogh Sail Design 36 sq. ft. sail with outriggers.  It performed moderately well, didn't point upwind much above 60 degrees, but with that added weight, and then a trolling motor was able to be an extremely versatile watercraft.  While it had its versatility, it took around 45 minutes to setup for both motoring and sailing, and dolly it into the water.  90+lbs before the sails and motor was enough to not want to carry it, and with my father's old trailer, it was easier to just launch it off of that when we could.

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What I had come to realize is that while I enjoy kayaking, I was looking for a sailboat as my main boat all along.  Having no direct experience with them, having only modified my kayak to use basic sails, the search began in 2015.  In June my nephew and godson Steven was up to visit from NC and I wanted to check out a Hobie 18 catamaran.  Having nearly turned my kayak into a trimaran I was already sold on the multihull concept.  A heeling monohull while sufficiently able to handle wind seems so wasteful and not as fun and comfortable having leaning angles at times up to 45 degrees in my opinion!

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Sarah and Bryan's History:

Our search by Fall 2015 led us to a Windrider 16, locally for sale here in the Saratoga NY area that was sailed mostly on Great Sacandaga Lake, a 10 minute drive to the launch by the previous owner.  Of course being who I am, I took what is ideally a solo boat, but capable of up to 3 (500lbs), and tried to make it more of a two person traditional dinghy sailboat by adding bleacher seats.  The aluminum version was lightweight, but while close to what we wanted in a day sailor wasn't quite what we were looking for especially if we wanted to add our two dogs.  We essentially had to just leave them at home. 

 

Then in February 2016, I stumbled upon a 2002 Windrider 17 without a trailer down out on Long Island for a really good price.  It didn't have a jib sail or a boom, but was pretty functional other than that.  For the price I had to jump on it, maybe this dual cockpit boat would be what we want?  Of course, Sarah there right by my side was willing to put in all of the hours to get it to as close as what we wanted as we could get out of it.  Like Jim Brown, its designer, it gave us big ideas.  We wanted to turn it again into more.  Why not a weekender?  Clearly this boat could easily handle us and the dogs, so why not ask more out of it?  We added "our" version of the Windfisher platform (I was looking for it to be more easily removable) to be able to tend out on the water on it.  It did "kind of work", but we found it easier to just camp in a tent on land, and just forget most of the platform, just taking the bleacher seats I had on the WR16.  While certainly doable this approach was a bit more complex than what we wanted.

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We had previously been in contact with our now friend Mike Magee, whose boat (Tryst) is still for sale in Old Lyme CT (link can be found below), and were considering his masterfully crafted Marples 26 Constant Camber Trimaran.  We had already got in touch with him, and showed interest, but saving up for our wedding and potentially a family led us down a path to a tough decision.  How would we use his boat if we bought it?  We are looking for something that is a bit more geared for regular trailer sailing.  His boat while capable of used as such, is a bit more ideally suited for how he uses it, on a mooring.  The designer claims the initial 2 hour launch time can be cut down to under an hour, which while confident that Sarah and I could get it there, felt there were other considerations as well, such as always needing a boat launch capable of launching a 18' wide boat.  The amas or outriggers if you will have to be extended out and bolted in prior to launching.  Together this left me wondering how we could best take advantage of this well crafted boat.  I had spotted a Farrier 22 online in Wareham Mass, brokered by Multihull Source, the NEs premiere multi-hull dealer in February 2016.  The asking price had come down a bit by August, but still a bit high.  I wasn't sure what to do.

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We had a decision to make.  We had already agreed to keep our wedding small and inexpensive, but running the numbers I couldn't see how we could even make a low but still reasonable (to us) offer on the F-22.  Sarah seemed a little enthused when we went to check it out, partially since it was under a cover, and we didn't get a test sail like we had on Tryst (Mike's boat).  Also the F27s for sale there, which we similar asking price but much larger (and older), had caught her eye.

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Once we settled we had to sell the Windrider 17 and also plan not only an inexpensive wedding but an inexpensive honeymoon as well, I asked, "why not honeymoon on the boat?"  Luckily I didn't receive any objections, I knew it wasn't an extravagant honeymoon, but we figured we could make the most of it.

 

Negotiations took awhile, but luckily the boat had been listed for 2 years by this point, and the fact that perhaps it was partially home built, or  maybe others figured production F22s were on their way soon, or that the price was a bit high compared to a similar but older F24 and closer to a F27 price, it hadn't sold yet.  The former owner named her "The Fastest Indian" (great 2005 movie), but had since deceased, and his children weren't interested in it.  I'm guessing by the 2 year point they were more willing to negotiate on price, and luckily for us came down to a far more affordable level (for us).

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Our Farrier F-22:
Throughout most of 2016 we looked long and hard into what we desired to replace our Windrider 17.  Having what we consider to be the ultimate trailer sailor gives us the opportunity to take short getaways to various destinations in the Northeastern US.  While it mostly will be on inland lakes in NY, we plan on occasionally taking it out on Long Island Sound, and the Great Lakes.

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It had a bare-bones electrical system, needed a mast raising system, not to mention a trailer prior to purchase (long story).  While dormant over the winter, anxiety initially built up by how we could get it ready for our honeymoon.  However we have since worked on it enough that we feel it's at least ready for a sea trial.  (We had to at least iron out the mast raising system, i'm guessing the former owner paid a marina to do it perhaps?).