Partners · Case study
The first marquee partner. The live exemplar of the Partner-program co-brand. The proof point that the integration model works.
Photography: FleetEdge™ / SailrScience archive.
Farr Design is the naval architecture firm behind some of the most successful racing programs of the past four decades. Their portfolio spans the Whitbread/Volvo era, multiple America's Cup campaigns, dozens of grand-prix offshore boats, and a long list of production racing yachts that defined the high end of the sport.
Farr Design sells design judgment. They take a program’s goals, the rule it races under, and the fleet it races against, and design a hull that wins. Decades of race results shape that judgment. So does the SailrScience physics layer they have adopted.
Farr Design entered a Try engagement and worked up through Integrate to Partner. The progression followed the program’s standard shape: a bounded evaluation that answered a specific design question; a set of working tools that came out of that evaluation; a co-brand badge that recognized the integration had reached Partner depth.
Farr Design has adopted SailEdge™ and FleetEdge™ by SailrScience for client consulting: SailEdge for the per-boat analysis, FleetEdge for the fleet-scale analytics.
In July 2026 SailrScience compared its R16 physics against Farr Design’s own VPP across a matrix of wind angles and speeds, for eight certificate configurations of a Farr 40 One-Design. Farr Design reviewed the comparison.
What SailEdge reports is a performance change relative to the boat’s ORC certificate polar — how much faster or slower a configuration sails than the boat as certified, in knots or in seconds per mile. It is not a rating change. A rating is ORC’s to issue; a changed configuration is rated through a trial certificate from the rating office using official ORC software.
Inside Farr Design, SailrScience physics now sits next to the firm’s existing toolchain — VPP, CFD, parametric studies, tank-test data, and the firm’s own four-decade design archive. One new layer is fleet placement: ask the model where every other measured boat that made the same design choice has ended up, and it tells you. The fleet is now next to the design.
Farr clients see a Farr Design deliverable, same brand and same name. What changed is the physics depth behind it.
“Almost daily, we get requests from clients to help optimize and improve their boat’s performance. Questions like ‘What happens to performance if I cut down my jib or change my crew weight?’ are common. SailrScience is bringing a new level of data science to assessing the impact of configuration changes, allowing us to answer these questions for our clients more efficiently. The physics underlying the SailrScience models are based on widely used, well-validated algorithms — but the proof is in the details. In a detailed study of our Farr 40 One Design, looking at eight configuration changes, SailrScience’s evaluations consistently matched our proprietary in-house models. The SailrScience toolkit is now an exciting new addition to our consulting offerings.”
A client’s ORC certificate goes into SailEdge™ by SailrScience and comes back as a digital twin of the boat as certified. Farr Design then asks the questions clients bring — a smaller jib, a different crew weight, a sail added or cut — and reads the answer as a performance change against the boat’s own certificate polar.
On farrdesign.comFleetEdge™ by SailrScience places a boat among its measured peers — the fleet it races in, the archetype it belongs to, and the conditions that suit it or do not. Farr Design uses it to show a client where the boat sits and what the cohort record suggests about the choices in front of them.
On farrdesign.comThe Partner-program badge surfaces on the Farr Design site as a footer attribution: Powered by sailr.science™. The badge is small, located in the footer alongside the firm's primary identity, and links back to this case study.
The pattern is intentionally restrained. The customer-facing brand is Farr Design. SailrScience appears only as attribution. The arrangement is simple: SailrScience supplies the engine; the partner supplies the brand, the customer relationship, and the customer-facing judgment. Both sides keep their primary identity.
The Farr Design integration proved out the working model that the next partner cohort follows. Four things stood out:
The program is opening to a second cohort. Naval architecture firms, sail lofts, and racing teams — tell us how SailrScience physics could extend what you already do.