CORY SILKEN
Dynasty
Yacht designer and former Seahorse editor Julian Everitt
continues his study of some of the most influential design houses of the modern era with a look at the influence and some of the achievements of the design office founded by Germán Frers Snr in 1926
The term family firm applies to the Frers dynasty more than any other design house in the sailing world, but it is Germán Frers Jnr who moved the firm, front and centre, onto the world stage of ocean-racing yacht design. When in 1970, after working for only a
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handful of years in the offices of the greatest design house of them all, Sparkman & Stephens, Germán returned to his father’s yacht design business in Argentina and in 1972 produced four new IOR designs that would compete in the 1973 Admiral’s Cup in England. One of these designs, the 46ft Recluta, became Germán Frers’ defining boat in much the same way that Ganbare had done for Doug Peterson, Golden Apple for Ron Holland and Genie for Bruce Farr. While Peterson and Holland had their
relatively novel signature flat bottoms and pintail sterns, Bruce Farr had light displacement, broad, flat back ends and fractional rigs. However, Germán Frers’ early IOR raceboat designs had much more in common with the classic S&S shape which began evolving with the One Tonners of 1966, the 12 Metre Intrepid in 1967 and then the early IOR classics like Charisma and Running Tide. Frers was very much part of the S&S design team in the days leading up to the
IOR era and so when he returned to Argentina, to help run his father’s studio in 1970, this coincided with the very beginning of the IOR period. The design philosophies enshrined in Sparkman & Stephens’ famous offices on 5th Avenue were still very much to the forefront when Germán Frers’ first- generation IOR designs began to emerge. In one of those curious twists of fate
Frers, in those early days, attracted com- missions for ‘big’ boats – in the upper 40ft range rather than the Ton Cup classes that became the playground for Messrs Hol- land and Peterson. This suited his early interpretations of the IOR very well and pitted his first breakthrough designs of 1973 directly against the dominant designs of Sparkman & Stephens themselves. It proved to be a rewarding introduc-
tion. At 1973’s showpiece ocean-racing event, the Admiral’s Cup, in Cowes, the Frers-designed 46-footer Recluta placed second overall on individual points, beaten only by the similarly sized S&S-designed
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