Germa\u0301n Frers and his son Mani are among the most popular and revered yacht designers of their era. Tim Jeffery finds out what makes them tickPhoto: Luca ButtoIt was the economist J K Galbraith who said that there was \u201cno absolute standard of beauty. That,\u201d he added, \u201cis precisely what makes its pursuit so interesting.\u201d That interest in the pursuit of beauty is something that Germa\u0301n Frers and his son Mani have spent their working lives striving to attain. In the process they have created some of the most revered yachts and are among the most admired designers of their era.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a gift in a way,\u201d says Germa\u0301n about the felicitous lines that mark out a Frers design. The essence of his work is in the emotion-stirring aesthetics. \u201cIt comes naturally,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it\u2019s also a belief I have that design should transcend generations. It\u2019s easy to do something fashionable, something that has momentary success but doesn\u2019t last very long.\u201d
\nMani tells the story of being in St Tropez last year when his father was racing Fjord III, the classic 50ft yacht built in 1947. \u201cHe said: \u2018Come and see this boat. It was one I really loved as a kid\u2019. So I arrived in St Tropez and it was full of white classic yachts. I didn\u2019t know where Fjord was but I picked this one boat out straightaway. So there is some sort of connection. It was the first time I thought there might be something in genes and inheritance.\u201d
\nPhoto: Nico Martinez
\nJust as one line \u2013 the sheer \u2013 can define a boat, so it connects Germa\u0301n and Mani. \u201cI discussed sheer lines with my father and we see things exactly the same way. Yet he never taught me that. As a kid I was simply picking up a pencil and was in the design office every day, surrounded by photos of beautiful yachts and hearing all sorts of stories at the dinner table at home. There are plenty of guys in the office yet no one picks up the sheer that my father and I can draw.\u201d
\nAnd how they can draw. Both Frers are responsible for some of the world\u2019s most desirable yachts and Germa\u0301n, now 76, has no thoughts of winding down. \u201cI am not planning to retire,\u201d he says, adding that he might \u201cgo gaga\u201d if he did. \u201cI\u2019ve really enjoyed my profession and there\u2019s nothing I\u2019d rather be doing.\u201d Besides, the demand for his work is undiminished, particularly from clients of his own generation.
\nMani is similarly committed to his craft. \u201cWe don\u2019t realise the time it takes because we love what we do,\u201d he says. \u201cThen there is having the eye for it. We can work on a boat, review it, say it fits the brief but decide it is not the complete package. So we \u2013 how do you say it? \u2013 pull our sleeves up and do it again.\u201d
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Mani and Germa\u0301n now work less together: they are so close that they don\u2019t need to. Across three generations the Frers family has been responsible for 1,300 designs. When Germa\u0301n Sr was Germa\u0301n Jr, his father was already a prolific designer in Argentina.
\nBack in the 1920s his father designed his first yacht, Fjord. Yachting was a nascent sport in Argentina, based mostly on imported International Rule inspired boats from the US or UK. Fjord was a Colin Archer style heavy double-ender, and it was Germa\u0301n Sr\u2019s idea of a proper yacht for ocean voyaging.
\nHe later explored how plywood could be utilised, coming to similar conclusions as Ricus van de Stadt, Dutch boatbuilding pioneer. \u201cHe ended up drawing long waterline, hard chine, light displacement types,\u201d explains Mani. \u201cThat was a huge step.\u201d
\nSwan cruiser-racers
\nThe influence of his grandfather and father is manifest: \u201cMy father took over my grandfather\u2019s mantle and made beautiful, fast boats of every size. To keep this tradition and rate of development you have to go at an intense rate. But this must be done from a very solid base.\u201d
\nThe Frers name came to international notice in 1954 when one of his designs, the 40ft Trucha 11 came 2nd overall in the Bermuda Race. A string of successes followed for a series of Frers-designed and owned yachts with the name Fjord.
\nHis son was equally drawn to design and at just 16 drafted his first boat. It was for a friend of his father who had returned to Argentina from the US excited about the new material glass fibre. \u201cHe wanted a design and my father said: \u2018I\u2019ll let Germa\u0301n Jr do it. Just go ahead\u2019.\u201d
\nShamanna, a Frers Nautor Swan 115. Photo: Kurt Arrigo
\nThe 10m yawl was launched in 1958 and represented the younger Germa\u0301n\u2019s ideals: flush deck, clean lines, aerodynamic with a rounded deck-edge. It represented a big step away from the light, chined boats his father was drawing which, though popular, were not treated kindly by the CCA (Cruising Club of America) rule, which evolved into the IOR (International Offshore) rule.
\nThe younger Frers studied naval architecture at the University of Buenos Aires and then worked at Sparkman & Stephens in the United States from 1965 to 1968. The ability to fashion a beautiful yacht that was optimised to a rating was something that Frers honed while working at S&S before setting up on his own in Manhattan.
\nIn time, Frers returned to Buenos Aires to run the studio his father started back in 1925. The 1971 and 1973 yachts Matrero and Reculta were making names for themselves in the Argentine Admiral\u2019s Cup teams and the son was now established in his own right.
\nThe stunning lines and high performance of Barong D make her a formidable sight. Photo: Kurt Arrigo
\nBy the mid-1980s he had become one of the most successful designers of the IOR era. The yacht names still resonate \u2013 Ron Amey\u2019s Noryema, Ted Turner\u2019s Tenacious King Juan Carlos\u2019s Bribon \u2013 to name but a few.
\nFrers\u2019s name was synonymous with success on the maxi circuit from the early days of Herbert van Karajan\u2019s Helisara, through to Bevin Koeppel\u2019s Congere, John Kahlbetzer\u2019s Bumblebee, Huey Long\u2019s Ondine, Bill Koch\u2019s Matador, Raul Gardini\u2019s Il Moro di Venezia and Jim Kilroy\u2019s Kialoa. One of his most famous designs was Conny van Rietschoten\u2019s Flyer II, which won the 1981-82 Whitbread Round the World Race.
\nIn the late 1980s Mani came to England to complete the renowned yacht design course at the Southampton Institute. After graduating in 1992, he went to Milan, where his father had opened a second office to service the 1992 Il Moro di VeneziaAmerica\u2019s Cup\u00a0campaign. Germa\u0301n had been travelling monthly from Argentina but with Mani now in Italy he could remain mostly in Buenos Aires. This is largely how father and son have worked for the past 20 years.
\nPrada\/Luna Rossa
\nThe different generations have different working practices as well as different offices. Germa\u0301n has a long-standing and close-knit team, including designer Nestor Fourcade, who has been with him for 42 years. Mani, by contrast, uses a global network of 40-plus specialists, relationships built up especially during his time as designer, with his father, in 2000 with the Prada\/Luna Rossa\u00a0America\u2019s Cup campaign and as sole designer in 2003 and 2007 for Sweden\u2019s Victory Challenge. In an age when corporate teams had taken over, Mani was probably the last named solo designer.
\nEach has a different way of working, too. Germa\u0301n is close to his team in Buenos Aires \u2013\u201cIt\u2019s bit like those old marriages!\u201d \u2013 while Mani admits to being happier at the drawing table, pencil in hand creating lines, or running a design through advanced software programs rather than communicating between offices.
\nBut both Germa\u0301n and Mani have worked on numerous projects together. \u201cTo have Mani make a success of it in his own right is very nice,\u201dsays Germa\u0301n.\u201cAs long as he is happy, we continue with our good relationship and continue to cooperate on a couple of projects, I am happy. I thought that we would continue to work as I did with my father but I recognise there are difficulties in that. Different generations do things in a different way. It was similar for me.\u201d
\nGerman Frers on Rebecca: \u201cWe had to bend over backwards to please the owner, to the point the boat was started without a bow because we were still discussing whether to do a plumb bow, a long overhang or something in between. To my regret, I gave up a little too much to the client\u2026 a concession to classical aesthetics.\u201d
\nThe family thread remains a strong tie between the three generations. Germa\u0301n has reworked (for modern construction methods) a 20m ketch that was designed by his father but never built due to wartime material shortages. She was Recluta II and will employ the contemporary rig and gear saved from the original Recluta, which was lost in a grounding.
\nIn all there are over 10,000 yachts bearing three generations of the Frers marque. It is a hallmark of Germa\u0301n and Mani that they eschew self-promotion, despite having created some of the most innovative and revered yachts of the modern era.
\nBetween them, the body of work includes Horst Holmberg\u2019s 1981 ketch Volador, which stood at the cusp of modern systems taming large rigs for small crews and Gianni Agnelli\u2019s 1987 Extra-Beat, which heralded the trend for high performance daysailers.
\nGerman Frers on Stealth: \u201cThe brief was: \u2018I want a boat that will give me pleasure. It\u2019s going to be called Stealth. It\u2019s going to be black with black sails.\u2019 It was high-performance, good looking and pointed the way towards a new type of yacht.\u201d Photo: Gilles Martin Raget
\nOther landmark designs have been Jim Clark\u2019s 155ft sloop Hyperion, built in 1996, a fully networked vessel that had 60km of fibre optic cabling to her self-learning computer controlled systems. Then Agnelli\u2019s Extra Beat follow-up, the 1995 Stealth \u2013 98ft of pure speed and able to hold 30-knot speeds with minimal crew and scarcely more than a head, a sofa and means to boil a kettle.
\nOne of the most beautiful designs is the 140ft classic ketch Rebecca, commissioned by owner Charles Butt in 1999 and still referenced 20 years later as one of the most soul-stirring and elegant yachts afloat.
\nFrank Gehry, the architect, chose to work with Germa\u0301n Frers on his own, slightly eccentric flush-decked Foggy, launched in 2015, something that shows Frers is appreciated as much by the cognoscenti as by owners of humbler production boats. Asked about their popularity, Mani says: \u201cClients come to us because they could not find what they liked on the market. For them, none of the existing yachts were seakindly or efficient in terms of drag.\u201d
\nThe distinctive Foggy, was a commission for architect Frank Gehry
\nMany clients come for motorboats, too, often from a sailing background. In 2017 Baltic Yachts launched the first MY78, for which Mani was the designer. It utilises lightweight composite construction and Mani believes it is a breakthrough combination of low displacement, high performance, fuel efficient, seakindly hull forms.
\nGerma\u0301n Frers says all the miles that three generations have logged at sea go to shape yachts that are not just practical and efficient but sensuous too. \u201cMy father once said to me that \u2018between the faces of Sophia Loren and San Martin [an 18th Century Argentine war hero] is only a few millimetres of difference, but the effect is very different\u2019.\u201d It is with these subtleties that the Frers, grandfather, father and son, have excelled.
\nFirst published in the December 2017 edition of Yachting World.
\nThe post Frers design: The family dynasty behind some of the world\u2019s most beautiful yachts appeared first on Yachting World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Germa\u0301n Frers and his son Mani are among the most popular and revered yacht designers of their era. Tim Jeffery finds out what makes them tickPhoto: Luca ButtoIt was the economist J K Galbraith who said that there was \u201cno … <\/p>\n