Boats with this level of sailing performance have never been as easy to helm and handle
Pink Gin Verde was one of the first boats in the world to use Doyle Sails’ Structured Luff mainsail technology to full advantage, around the same time as its adoption at the apex of grand prix yacht racing and several years before it appeared on large, high-performance cruisingmultihulls. A lens of carbon fibre structure within the luff of themainsail creates pre-bend in themast when the cunninghamline is tensioned. ‘When you load up the cunningham
on this boat it changes the sail shape completely,’ says Mario Giattino, director of Doyle Sails Italy, who was involved in the rig package design loop for the Café Racer. ‘It’s incredible how far you can move the masthead just by hauling the cunningham up and down. This technology has also been tested in the America's Cup and on Maxi72s.’ The sail-handling systems are entirely
electric, which Open Season’s owner Thomas Bscher says is amassive improvement in the quality of life on board. ‘One of the wonderful things about this boat is the absence of noise,’ he explains. ‘It’s like the old wooden dinghy frommy childhood. My last boat couldn’t sail without these screaming hydraulics.We were running themat 380 bar, others had 720 and it’s a life-threatening situation if
something breaks with somuch oil pressure. I don’t want that anymore.’ Above all, the Café Racer is designed
around the fact that time has become the most valuable commodity for the modern yacht owner. When you want to go sailing, it’s ready to go. ‘We use it mainly as a family boat and for that we love that it has no backstays because it makes holiday sailing much easier,’ Bscher says. ‘We do use running backstays for racing.’ ‘Last year we had maybe 21 knots
of wind, the boat was up on the plane and we were doing 23-24 knots like a motorboat,’ he says. ‘No other boat in this field – yet – will do that.’ Four Baltic 68 Café Racers have now
been delivered and it’s interesting to note that all of their owners have downsized from much larger, more complex sailing yachts. For example Pink Gin Verde’s first owner had a Baltic 175 and Thomas Bscher’s previous Open Season was an
extended former Wallycento. ‘Many of our clients are looking for
easy-to-use boats,’ Hawkins observes. ‘This is them getting something for the weekend, getting their hands back on the wheel and enjoying sailing with friends.’ The Café Racer’s low freeboard, super clean deck layout and wide open cockpit with outboard helm positions create a feeling of direct connection with the water. It is a very engaging boat to sail. One major advantage from a buyer’s
perspective is that the total lead time to build a Café Racer is less than a year. That’s remarkably quick given the sophistication of the boat’s construction, which involves a fully optimised laminate layout with extensive use of unidirectional carbon fibres and honeycomb core, plus fit-out, systems and finish to full superyacht standards. Mattias Svenlin, a technical project leader at Baltic who has overseen the construction of several Café
�
Slimliine solar panels on the coachroof
The view over the deck from the helm stations and cockpit is beautifully uncluttered SEAHORSE 79
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