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I will certainly try to put together an answer to Best Friend's question. I did not mention Farr for a number of reason's but mostly because I own a Farr which I have talked about at length and so felt that it was important to give examples other than Farr. In many ways, Farr was one of the first designers who grasped the implication of the MHS/IMS rule and his non-IOR designs of the 1980's really anticipated and ultimately became the IMS typeform with boats like Goucho and Rush really firing the first shots across the bows of the rest of the sailing world that a big change was coming.
The odd part of this, is that for the past few years Farr's office seems to have focused on leading edge designs and does not seem to have done many performance cruising designs in the size range we are discussing. Of course, Farrs office has done some nice racer cruisers in this size such as the Farr 395, Beneteau First 36.7, 40.7 and 44.7 but build quality are not as robust as some of the other boats that mentioned. I have not seen one but the Farr designed Fingulf 43 looks like it will be a very nice performance cruiser.
I actually think that some of Farrs coastal cruiser designs from the late 1970's and early 1980's were better cruisers, boats like the Farr 1020, Farr 11.6, and Farr 44.
I need to run, more later,
Jeff
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