Never a dull moment
Best known these days for an astonishing output of fast and dramatic superyachts such as Pink Gin, Baltic Yachts are bringing that expertise and experience to bear on a new selection of 67ft semi-custom fast-cruisers…
In the boatbuilding business a good reputation is hard won and easily lost, and Baltic Yachts’ reputation is as solid as every boat it’s ever launched. It’s not a yard that has ever resorted to trumpet-blowing PR fanfare, it’s a yard that has, for 45 years, remained quietly focused on developing innovative techniques to build light, fast, impeccably finished boats from best-quality materials. The story began in Bosund, Finland, in 1973 with a C&C-designed 46ft cruiser-racer, the first of many from designers like Petersen, Judel/Vrolijk, S&S and Tripp. Today Baltic are best known for building custom superyachts like the 175ft Judel/Vrolijk sloop Pink Gin. Baltic’s finger is for ever on the pulse of the yachting market and they have identified strong demand for a fast, easily handled bluewater family cruiser that will happily sail on in light airs when others are hoisting the iron jib. To create this semi-custom boat Baltic approached the team behind Pink Gin, Judel/Vrolijk and Design Unlimited. ‘Baltic wanted a 20.5m mould available so that they could deliver a semi-custom performance cruising concept at relatively short notice. That was the brief,’ says designer Rolf Vrolijk, ‘to build a boat with the quality of Baltic, with all the attention to detail and weight, making sure there’s enough volume available to have the interior configuration customers want and still deliver a higher level of
70 SEAHORSE
performance for a cruiser. The main aim is comfortable, fast cruising in a range of different conditions. ‘We have worked on similar concepts before with Baltic, with the 66 and the 56, and they sold quite a lot of boats out of those moulds. The idea was to update the concept with a more modern type of hull and present options to the customers they have lined up – different deck layouts, several rigs and sailplans, three keel configurations, twin or single rudders. The concept boat is a completely composite carbon-fibre structure but the yard can build many different variations. The first boat will have a fibreglass outer skin with carbon structural reinforcement, others will push really hard on the carbon, so displacement will vary between 23.5 and 25 tonnes lightship. We had to make sure that the hull shape would tolerate slight variations in displacement.’ ‘We didn’t want to go for the latest type of performance-oriented cruising boat – we’ve designed several boats that have narrow waterlines, which rely on more stability when the boat heels,’ he continues. ‘This is a more conservative approach. The boat already has good initial stability, with enough volume and enough beam aft to have quite an effective waterline length, and slightly more volume in the topsides forward to compensate. The volume distribution contributes to the directional stability, so she uses less power
There is a pleasing symmetry with Baltic’s re-entry into the semi custom fast cruiser-racer market. So long best known for its successful range of mid-sized production designs of this genre, the Finnish yard is now back with a very much refreshed offering for what could reasonably be described as the ‘new’ mid-sized market… ‘mid-sized’ having crept up in the intervening years from 35-45ft to nearer 65-75ft
in today’s parlance!
under autopilot. When heeled the boat has a very similar volume distribution. In the normal range of performance cruising, so zero to 20 or 22° of heel, the boat stays quite symmetrical – heeling doesn’t change the longitudinal trim a lot.’ ‘We use our in-house CFD programs, which are linked to our in-house VPP programs, and we also work with the sail designers to get the correct sail force for our VPP programs,’ adds Vrolijk. There are three different rig and sailplans, but all are carbon with three tapered aerofoil spreaders, Nitronic 50 rod rigging, Park Avenue or V-booms and non-overlapping jibs for ease of handling. Mainsails will be either single-line slab or in-boom reefing. ‘One is a bluewater cruising rig, which doesn’t need reefing below 18-20kt of true wind speed, and we have standard and performance rigs. In terms of sail area, there’s a difference of around 10 per cent between them, about 30m2. The performance square-head main has 2-3 per cent more area in the main. It does involve running backstays – some people have no problem with that, others don’t want it at all. ‘We also have three different appendage configurations. The first boat will have a 3.9m telescopic keel and the second a 3.3m shallow-draft fixed keel, and then there is also a performance version with a 3.9m fixed keel. Within all these arrangements you can go for either the single or twin rudder
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