Frers versus Farr

At the Nautor Challenge christening James Boyd had a scout around their two different Volvo Ocean 60s

Since the launch of the Whitbread 60 almost a decade ago, Bruce Farr and his company Farr Yacht Design have been the dominant design force in this class.

In the Volvo Ocean Race Norwegian entry Knut Frostad has pinned his colours on Team New Zealand designer Laurie Davidson - both djuice dragons boats are by Davidson, although only one will be racing. Meanwhile Grant Dalton's two boat Nautor Challenge campaign has what Dalton terms a 'middle of the road' Farr boat and a design by Mani Frers, son of the great Argentian German, responsible for Flyer II, the winner of the third Whitbread ,and most recently associated with the Prada America's Cup campaign.

At the Nautor Challenge launch in Puerto Cervo on Monday madforsailing had a chance to have a crawl round both the Farr and Frers boats.

Which is which?

First things first. Four years ago it took several months to come up with a suitable mnemonic to help me remember whether it was EF Education or EF Language that was the girl's boat. Potentially there is even more room for confusion with Nautor Challenge's duo. They're backed by the Finnish boat builder Nautor, Amer Sport is principal sponsor, UBS is secondary backer and the boats are named Amer Sport One and Amer Sport Too, although we don't know which is which (until Dalton decides which boat will be his in the race) and to the untrained eye they would appear to be called Wilson and Suunto which is their dominant branding.

So:
Wilson=Frers design
Suunto=Farr design