Designed to deliver an electrifying performance in more ways than one, this easy to handle day sail yacht is boosted by green power. The un-plug and go electric propulsion and generation system is super eco-friendly and finished to a luxurious standard on deck and below.
Doyle Sails and Baltic Yachts have seen many successful collaborations over the last number of years but this is the first that has been launched with such an intense focus on reducing the yacht’s environmental impact.
The majority of the hull structure will use naturally grown fibres with naturally grown flax in 50% of the hull and as a reinforcement alongside a beautiful and durable alternative deck material, specially treated to look and behave like a hardwood. This low local emissions yacht is designed for thrilling, quick and easy sailing, just unplug, step aboard and enjoy!
The yacht features a powerful sail plan, utilising Doyle Sails’ most innovative technology to ensure that the yacht is easy to manage for two people and that sails can be used with ease. The yacht will be fitted with a Square Top Mainsail and paired with a Structured Luff jib and Genoa Staysail, Cableless A3 and Cableless Upwind J0. All sails are built out of Doyle Sails’ Stratis 1100 range in Black providing unmatched performance to every Stratis sail.
In the Grand Prix and Superyacht market, Doyle Sails has trigged a key change in design, delivering breakthrough technology that has allowed yachts like the Baltic 68 Café Racer to take full advantage of the concept and deliver lighter, faster, high performance yachts and sails. At the core of this development is changing the manner in which load in the luff of a sail is distributed and by reducing luff sag it allows the sail to achieve more driving force.
These sails offer wider sailing angles and better furling reliability, either top down or bottom up. Reducing luff sag is one of the biggest factors in allowing our sails to achieve more driving force. In a Superyacht application, we’re seeing a reduction in sag at the middle of the forestay of up to a metre, which in turn means that the sail can be projecting a metre further to windward. Alongside cruising advantages which means that the reduction in weight allows the sails to be easier to store and handle.
Sailing without runners has obvious challenges also upwind with ever increasing loads seen in key racing classes such as the TP 52. The Baltic 68 rig project kicked off with Doyle Sails load sharing sail technology as an enabler reducing headstay sag through a given load. Headsails have traditionally been built out of relatively stretchy materials being suspended off, or around, a headstay or luff cable taking most of the loads with relatively low head and tack loads in the sail. Modern sail development has seen the same evolution as everywhere else: lighter and higher performance materials. High modulus sailcloth will result in more load being taken by the sail rather than the cable. Pushed to the extreme this means that the sail can take the luff load on its own, even in highly loaded sails.
Another development in modern sail design is the ability to lay fibre according to load paths. If you expand on this you can effectively define the load paths through manipulating the fibre distribution in the Stratis membrane. If you concentrate the load carrying fibres in an arch with an offset from the luff, this arch will effectively push the sailcloth ahead of itself as the loads will tend to straighten the arch effectively reducing luff sag.
For the Baltic 68 Café Racer specifically, the combined headstay + luff loads have been reduced from a typical 12 tonnes to 9 tonnes with 50% of this load carried in the sail itself. Interestingly this means that headstay loads are lower when sailing than at the dock and that you will see the highest loads in the structural headstay sailing with the full main and staysail where the structural headstay does not benefit from a load sharing headsail taking the full dock tune load as well as handling the resultant mainsail load.
ABOUT STRUCTURED LUFF // Learn more here >>
ABOUT DOYLE SAILS // Around the world, Doyle Sails has over 500 sailmakers in 46 different locations, all equally passionate about sailing – living and breathing our ethos’ Global Leaders and Local Experts.’
As sailors, our obsession with sailing connects us to the water. The water is our playground, a sanctuary where we seek enjoyment, a competitive playing field where we race as competitors; it’s sometimes our home and always a place that unlocks our sense of adventure wherever that adventure might take us. Behind every adventure is a Doyle sailor who shares this same obsession as you. We put your journey at the very heart of what we do to deliver the ultimate enjoyment and performance, powering our constant need to push the boundaries in sail design and innovation, to reimagine sailing.
From dinghies, club racers and cruising yachts through to Grand Prix campaigns and Superyachts, we are your experts.