Falcon: New Owner Wanted
Falcon comes to the Newport International Boat Show from 17 to 20 September. We originally designed her in 2005 and more recently, we directed the rebuild that produced what you’ll see on the dock, This is less of a listing and more of an outreach to the next owner – someone who’ll appreciate the kind of sailing only Falcon makes possible.
Picture the second night of a six-hundred-mile race in the Caribbean. Eleven islands, twenty knots of trade wind, a fleet strung out over forty miles of black water.
On most of the “high performance” yachts, dinner will consist of foil pouch and a kettle. The off watch will sleep on sailbags stacked to weather. And everybody knows where the bucket is. Hey…it goes with the territory, and it’s an understood part of the deal. You wanna go fast, you give things up.
Only on Falcon, somebody is making ice.
We want to tread carefully here, because don’t get us wrong, this is a boat that goes fast. Ten knots upwind, fourteen and better reaching, a recorded top end of 16.8. She has won the New England classic circuit over and over, first at Boothbay, first at Camden, first at Safe Harbor Newport twice, first in class at the Opera House Cup, Spirit of Tradition Seasonal Trophy in back to back years. Nobody hands you those results for being comfortable.
And what’s interesting is how she got there, because it didn’t happen all at once.
Falcon developed in stages over more than two years at Lyman-Morse, and the order of the work is the whole story. What started as an underwater repair, turned into a new high-aspect bulb keel and a high-aspect carbon rudder, drawn and installed as a matched pair so the two foils work together across the whole sailing envelope. Below that went a CNC-machined carbon plate to carry the loads, a carbon keel trunk, revised chainplates, and a sacrificial crush box in case she ever finds something hard again.
Next project was to install a taller rig. Specifically an Offshore Spars carbon mast on Future Fibres carbon rigging, carrying 2,160 square feet. We moved the sail area out of the foretriangle and up into a bigger mainsail with a non-overlapping jib.
A tall narrow sail plan is more efficient than a short wide one carrying the same area. A jib that doesn’t overlap gets sheeted inside the shrouds instead of dragged around them, so she points higher. And under the rating rule, area in the main costs less than area in a genoa, which means she carries more sail for the same number.
Where it does cost you is reaching, which is what a big overlapping headsail is genuinely good for. The answer to that is in the sail locker: two cable-less carbon Code Zeros, one masthead and one fractional, plus a spinnaker staysail. Significantly faster across a broader wind range.
Finally, the taller rig needed a way to be handled, which is where the third build-stage came in. A full Grand Prix hydraulic package runs the furler, both Cunninghams, the inhauler, outhaul, traveler, checkstays, backstay and the winches. Eight or ten people can race her hard with it. Two people can go cocktail cruising.
And that last piece is what changes how a season might just unfold for her next owner.
Because here is the rest of what’s aboard. A gimbaled propane stove and oven. A top-loading refrigerator and a separate freezer. An ice maker. A full-size double-basin sink. Two electric heads, hot pressurized water and a separate stall shower off the owner’s cabin. Reverse-cycle air conditioning, which in February in Antigua is not a luxury item so much as the difference between sleeping and lying there. Starlink, tucked out of sight under the aft loveseat. A barbecue that installs on the pushpit rail, which longtime readers will recognize as the same instinct that produced a Father’s Day cookout in the middle of the Atlantic aboard Isobel this summer!
So who is she for?
Somebody who wants to race, first and foremost. Antigua in the spring, New England through the summer, and the occasional Med event every couple of years to mix things up. There’s a professional crew available who already know her, which means a serious campaign doesn’t start with building an organization from scratch.
But also somebody who wants to spend time on the boat on lay-days between races. Falcon’s owner can finish a distance race and then take four friends to dinner without an entire conversion process. Most boats this quick can’t do that. Most boats that comfortable can’t do the first part.
Which brings us to the WANTED poster we’re hanging up at Bowen’s Warf next week:
WANTED:
One owner. Likes to win.
Prefers to eat on china rather than foil pouches.
Should be comfortable finishing a six-hundred-miler and then hosting dinner with family and friends.
Won’t moor her at the dock and just look at her.
REWARD:
Ten professional crew who already know the boat, three million dollars of work somebody else has already paid for, and a hot shower six hundred miles from anywhere.
She’s at Newport from the 17th through the 20th. We’re co-brokering with Northrop and Johnson. As her original designers and the firm that directed the rebuild, we can tell you exactly which of the last three years of work you’d actually feel and which of it you’d only ever read about. Come find us on the dock.