Baltic Yachts 68 - 20m Café Racer
Sleek, simple to sail, and sustainably innovative without compromise, Baltic’s 68 Café Racer Pink Gin Verde is the optimum plug-and-play, ready to go, smart choice. A daysailor by design, she smoothly extends to long weekends with onboard energy and posh comfort to spare.
Launched in May of 2021, followed by successful sea trials in August, Pink Gin Verde recently displayed her inviting attributes at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup in September in Porto Cervo, earning enthusiastic raves.
Naval Architect Javier Jaudenes, in the spotlight for the Baltic 108 WinWin sailing yacht of the year in 2015 and St. Barth Bucket race winner, designed Pink Gin Verde to parallel the popular pared-back 1960s motorbikes that shared café racer distinction. The café racer individuals were known for their quick jaunts between cafes as well as for owning a rock and roll subculture attitude that earned them a global style all their own. Jaudenes is also credited with Pink Gin Verde’s exterior design and worked in tandem with Jens Paulus, Hermès bespoke objects designer, on interiors.
By the Numbers
PGV stretches to 20.73 meters LOA, reaching with her reverse bow to lengthen the waterline. She has a beam of 5.63 meters, a draft of 4 meters, a displacement of 22.8 tonnes and a ballast of 8.2 tonnes.
Powered by a pair of low-emission, low maintenance 15kW Oceanvolt engines, that arrangement ensures Pink Gin Verde sails along with the wind, as well as without it. A freewheeling, controllable-pitch propeller charges the lithium battery bank while sailing, via solar cells and a hydrodynamic generator. Additionally, a microturbine range extender adds to the joy of sailing, and at some point, will be running on hydrogen or biofuels. The system is designed to perform at its best between 12 and 14 kts, making it a worthy craft for both racing and cruising.
Pink Gin Verde is fitted with Doyle Sails that are designed to be easily managed by a short-handed crew. All sails are made with Doyle Sails’ Black Stratis 1100, which is lighter and easier to handle than most. Sporting a square-top mainsail, the plan pairs it with a Structured Luff jib and genoa staysail, cableless A3, and cableless upwind jo.
The technology reduces sag of the middle forestay by a meter, enabling wider sailing angles and ensuring reliable furling from either top or bottom. Since the fiber is laid in accordance with the load path, 50 percent of the luff loads are carried in the sail itself, reducing the load from an average of 12 tons to 9 tons. The result is improved performance with less weight and an easy, safe, enjoyable experience that very quickly transitions from the slip to sea for active sailing.
Eco-Spirited Materials with Environmental Advantages
An alternative to teak, Pink Gin Verde’s deck is built with a sustainable, durable cork material from Marinedeck. A high-performance composite with the appearance of teak, it is weather tight, highly fire-resistant, long-wearing, easy to maintain, cool to the touch, stain-repellant, and has earned high noise and thermal insulating praise in its 30 years of use.
These non-slip decks, harvested in Portugal by companies in agreement with the Forest Stewardship Council, are additive in nature. Rather than the subtractive process of measuring and cutting teak, Marinedeck cork decking is built to exact measurements, can be fabricated on board and installed from templates, reducing materials and installation costs. Aside from Forest Stewardship Council certified wood, it is the only product 100 percent certified for marine decking.
The hull is laminated with a bespoke flax fabric from Swiss firm Bcomp. The flax is grown and harvested with little or no herbicides or fertilizers, making it less harmful to the environment. Two plies of ampliTex™ SPRINT flax fabric, one woven and one multiaxial, sandwich each side of an interior layer of pre-catalyzed resin, contributing more than 50 percent of the hull’s reinforcement.
This sustainably-driven sandwich enjoys a remarkably low void content in addition to reducing man-hours required to lay in the mold. Already proven in the marine industry, flax is known to absorb vibration and blanket noise while saving space and reducing weight. AmpliTex is also used in the keel area for strength. A versatile fiber, flax can be pigmented and is beautiful in both structural and aesthetic uses.
Recycled plastic bottles find their way into the non-structural panel cores with Armacell polyethylene foam. Corecell and balsa core are used in the hull laminate and bulkheads, respectively.
The sleek curves of the rooftop solar panels produce 1.5 kW even while moored, managing to look both beautiful and functional on this stunning yacht profile. Pink Gin Verde’s systems incorporate lower humidity recirculated air in combination with fresh air to reduce power use directed toward air conditioning. Overall, reduction of power usage has been demonstrated to be up to 30 percent. The solar panels produce enough power to run onboard systems and refrigeration in Eco-mode, lightening the load on the battery bank. UV filters are thoughtfully placed to maintain bacteria-free air.
