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(Great) sportboat performance – extraordinary value
The new FarEast 28R draws on the high-performance racing heritage of the FarEast 31R from one of the world’s largest producers of Olympic and world champion one-designs – and all at an affordable price
Amid growing worldwide interest in sportboat one-designs in the 27-30ft size range, one of the world’s largest ISAF-approved producers of one-design class boats has teamed up with the Simonis-Voogd design studio to introduce the new FarEast 28R. Built at Shanghai FarEast Boats Co, this latest one-design delivers the world-class consistency, durability and quality sought after in a production one-design, along with the high performance needed to attract interest in a very competitive sector of the market. The FarEast heritage in producing racing and performance cruising yachts goes back to 2009 when Simonis-Voogd designed the FarEast 26 as a dual-purpose racer-cruiser that combined performance with comfort and safety suitable for the broad marketplace. FarEast’s use of modern resin-infused laminates and foam core construction ensured both strength for durability and light weight for performance, along with other features such as a lifting keel and a clever interior accommodation layout to enhance versatility. The FarEast 26 has proved highly successful, and today it is one of the most common boat types seen throughout the East Asian market.
Building on this success, FarEast then introduced a smaller version in 2012, the FarEast 18, to accommodate a market interested in even more practicality and portability ashore while still retaining solid performance. Simonis-Voogd designed this boat for the family sailor who wants a good day’s sailing, but it is also suitable for a crew of racing enthusiasts. The FarEast
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18R then soon followed, using the same hull but a new ergonomic and streamlined deck layout to make this boat an ideal sail trainer and racer. Easy to rig and transport, this design can be brought from being road-ready to sail-ready in minutes. In 2013 FarEast then made a bold no-compromise leap forward into the racing world with the FarEast 31R. The Simonis-Voogd design took all the performance ideas generated from the previous boats and combined them with features seen on the latest HPR designs to create an amazing carbon fibre platform that performs well beyond its 9.5m length. The 31R with its reverse bow features a long waterline length hull fitted with an enormous sail plan, carbon spars from Selden, Harken deck gear, split backstays, under-deck controls, bow-launched asymmetric spinnaker and some unusual innovative features such as its ‘bow spoilers’ to enhance airflow into the headsail.
The constituent parts of the 31R were also built using the same processes as the other FarEast boats – vacuum resin-infused cored laminates built in female tooling, carbon fibre keel fin to hold a 1,200kg bulb, Plexus bonding materials and so on – but the use of carbon has made a structure that is considerably stiffer, lighter and stronger. This boat was built to show that FarEast could produce a performance sportboat positioned at the very cutting edge of build and design.
‘We did the 31 project as a concept boat, not really intended for the mass market,’ said Maarten Voogd. ‘It has everything at
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