Introduction

Be aware! English is not my mother's tongue!

It is now about a year since I ordered the F-22 plans from Ian Farrier. I was very enthusiastic about his designs from the first time I saw his boats on the internet some 7 -8 years ago (the first time I actually saw an F-boat was however this summer, Steinar Indergaard's F-82, and it probably had the best finish in the marina). At the time I was rebuilding a Telstar 26 "Frimann" and I have had lots of fun with that boat, but she is on the heavy side, only trailerable in theory, and she is now soon 35 years of age and delaminating (even more places).

I also spent some time designing and making an r/c scale model of a 5m demountable trimaran, but then Mr Farrier published his news on the soon-to-come F-22 when I was in this process. At last all the necessary factors such as funding, place to build and an agreement with my wonderful wife was in place and I found it insane to use my own plans instead of Mr Farriers proven competence and I have not and I'm sure will not regret.

The F-22 was chosen because I sail mostly singlehanded, I would like to trailer it to distant places (Lofoten, Adriatic, Geiranger etc) and the Norwegian roads are not always as wide as 5m (16' 5") and low weight and low drag is an important factor. Also, this is his latest design on the evolutionary ladder. Furthermore, my time is limited and I'd like to finish building in this century, while, on the other hand, time of completion is not as important to me as the finished product.

In the planning process I stumbled over Henny van Oortmarssen's web page and I could not resist to explore the world of resin infusion. And I really liked what came out of the process. Farrier does not (for good reasons, I would know) recommend this method for 'one off' boats unless you really want to spend extra money and extra time to work clean and with a very good result. Knowing myself from different projects over the years, this is exactly what I really want.

Then I had a chat with my friend 'Skipper' about matherials for the boat. We agreed quite soon that I would probbly always regret if I didn't make all possible effort to lower weight. The decision was an all carbon boat. Unfortunately , some airplane manufacturers did the same decision quite recently and it has proven impossible to get hold of any light carbon fibre fabric until this day (except 1mx1m pieces to 'unchristian' prices just for the reinforcements). I have been told that maybe there will come a couple of rolls in the end of this month from Korea. In the mean time I have used a hybrid of carbon and aramid (Kevlar), which is a good solution for the outer skin because of armid's good impact resistance but not as good as pure carbon for the inner skin due to aramid's poor compression qualities.

I have taken a lot of pictures of the buiding so far. I have also made experiences that I would like to share with other builders that might be interested. I have no html knowledge and I have not understood this blog-thing until recently. But I take the chance and throw myself out in the blog-world from this moment. I hope my postings can be of some use to some of you.