Farr began building boats at the age of 13 near Warkworth north of Auckland. His first boats were plywood hard chine Moth class designs. He later designed and built variants of Cherubs and especially Flying 18s. His early designs were built in plywood with a focus on lightweight with good planing shapes. By his late teens he was designing small lightweight keel boats that were successful on the race course. He first achieved acclaim as a sailboat designer in the highly competitive 18ft Skiff class, popular in Australia and New Zealand. Farr designs won the 18 ft Skiff Giltinan World title several times in the early 70s.
Ocean racing
Boats designed by Farr Yacht Design competed in every Whitbread Round the World Race after 1981, and won the 1986, 1990, 1994 and 1998 races. The first Bruce Farr yacht in the Whitbread Race was the Farr-designed Ceramco New Zealand, which competed in the 1980 Whitbread Race and won the Sydney to Hobart the same year. Farr's design proved exceedingly fast, and Ceramco New Zealand would have won the Round the World Race, save for an unfortunate dismasting on the first leg, a trans-Atlantic crossing. The deltas for the rest of the legs would have put Ceramco New Zealand 30 hours ahead of her next competitor. This yacht was helmed and captained by New Zealand's most famous yachtsman Sir Peter Blake. Farr designed the 58-foot yacht which came to be known as Maiden, with the first all-female crew in the 1989–90 Whitbread Round the World Race, skippered by Tracy Edwards MBE. The yacht had previously been skippered by South AfricanBertie Reed in the 1986-87 BOC single-handed challenge. Maiden is still active in 2018. In 2001 the event was renamed the Volvo Ocean Race. The Farr Yacht Design-designed Illbruck Challenge was victorious in 2002. Farr's Volvo Ocean Race boats fared less well in 2006 as all four of his designs experienced problems after various failures in their Farr-designed keel canting mechanisms, including an abandonment of the yacht Movistar which was unable to prevent the flow of water through the keel box and, to this day, lies on the ocean floor, unrecovered. Farr's Volvo Ocean 65 was the first ever One-Design selected for the Volvo Ocean Race, for the 2014-15 race, and again in the 2017-18 edition. Farr is the most successful designer of winners of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, having designed 15 overall winners between 1945 and 2003. Cookson Boatworks developed a new 50' design, using the Farr office to collaborate, called the Cookson 50. Irish-owned yacht Chieftain, conceived, developed and constructed in 2005 at Cookson's in New Zealand, was the overall winner of the 2007 Rolex Fastnet race. Shortly after it was launched, Chieftain finished 5th at Australia's Hamilton Island Race Week, then won class in the 2005 Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Chieftain competed in all of the 2006 season Royal Ocean Racing Club races and won class in the Round Ireland, won overall in Round Britain and Ireland Races, was awarded Boat of the Year in Ireland in 2006, and finished as the overall winner of the Rolex Fastnet Race.
America's Cup
Farr is also a designer of America's Cup competitors, including New Zealand's entries in 1986 and 2000, and Larry Ellison's United States's BMW Oracle Racing Challenger in 2003. Farr's design Young America proved faster than the other American sailed yachts, but was unsuccessful in defending the Cup in the 1995 Finals, losing 0–5 to a Davidson designed Black Magic of New Zealand, led by the late Sir Peter Blake. Among the most impressive of Farr's design boats was the 90-foot-long KZ-1, the Michael Fay-sponsored boat brought forth to challenge the San Diego Yacht Club immediately following their gaining the cup in 1987. The challenge was unusual in that it did not allow the host yacht club the conventional three to four years to prepare for the event, nor did the challenging boat adhere to the 12-metre class design that the America's Cup had been contested in for thirty-five years, nor did it allow time for other international challengers and defenders to participate. The unconventional challenge was answered with an unconventional defence, and the entire episode serves as an excellent case study on how the process of yacht racing can be mired in the legal system when America's Cup participants radically depart from the spirit of the rules. Farr sailed on the boat during the 1988 America's Cup.
Cruising yachts
Farr's cruising yachts have been sold and sailed the world around. His production designs have been produced by a variety of yacht manufacturers including Cookson Boats, Carroll Marine, Beneteau, Concordia, Baltic and Nauta. Some of the larger cruising luxury yachts Farr has designed include Bavaria, Mirabella, Philanderer, Sojana and the two Southern Wind built 100 footers: Farewell and Farandwide.
