A Clean Sweep: Baltic 111 Raven Recognised as the Pinnacle of Yacht Design

4 February 2025

The 34-metre foil-assisted Baltic 111 Raven has won four separate awards at the Boat International Design & Innovation Awards. At the awards ceremony in Kitzbühl, Austria on Sunday 2 February she won nearly all the awards for sailing yachts, winning every category in which she was eligible to enter.

The clean sweep of four major awards – Outstanding Exterior Design, Best Interior Design, Best Naval Architecture and Innovation Of The Year – is a testament to Baltic Yachts’ outstanding achievement in delivering this highly ambitious, pioneering new build project on time and on weight exceeding all expectations.

It’s fair to say that Baltic Yachts is the only yacht builder capable of turning the vision of Raven’s owner into reality. In doing so, combining the extreme light displacement weight that is required for foiling performance with world class levels of luxury, Baltic Yachts has achieved something that many in the marine industry thought was practically impossible.

The Raven project played to Baltic Yachts’ core strengths – above all, its ability to take on major challenges with a curious mindset, and to efficiently coordinate a complex web of design loops involving the world’s leading experts in a wide range of technical disciplines.

Baltic’s in-house team played an important role in the design and engineering phases of the project as well as construction, for example adapting America’s Cup foils to function at superyacht scale. The yard’s entire workforce played a pivotal role in finding and implementing every possible gram of weight savings.

“This was a magnificent evening for Raven and her team,” says Baltic Yachts’ EVP Henry Hawkins. “She is a remarkable yacht, truly groundbreaking in so many ways, developed and built by a remarkable team.”

“Credit for Raven’s success is shared with our core partners in this project: Jarkko Jämsén, Garth Brewer and A2B Marine Projects, Botin Partners, PURE Design & Engineering, and the owner’s team led by Klabbe Nylöf. Working together we have written a new page in the development of yachting innovation.”

Outstanding Exterior Design
Raven was the clear winner in a wide-ranging field of finalists. The judges praised her styling, which they likened to that of a supercar. One judge said: “She’s a spaceship but it makes sense.”

Fulfilling her owner’s brief to create a yacht that combines the speed of a cutting-edge racing yacht with the experience of a true superyacht, Raven’s massive lateral foil arms make a striking impression. Her innovative centre cockpit – the bird’s nest (see below) – puts guests at the heart of the sailing action while keeping them safely separate from the highly loaded lines and crew operations in the working aft cockpit.

Best Interior Design
One of Raven’s most remarkable achievements is that she looks, feels and functions like a true superyacht. She is emphatically not a stripped-back racer, despite having half the displacement weight of a conventional high-performance sailing yacht of a comparable size – and being easily twice as fast.

Her next-level performance targets required the design team to adopt an aggressive focus on weight savings in all aspects of their work, pushing the boundaries of weight optimisation to the extreme. “She’s extremely fast but looks like a yacht,” said one judge, noting Raven’s creative use of finishes and flexible layout.

The interior design team kept some of Raven’s structural features visible as a showcase of her hi-tech construction, juxtaposing them with delicate artisan materials such as rattan panels on the deckheads. The judging panel commended her sporty yet warm interior, with one judge saying: “The use of finishes is quite clever – I love the combination of rattan and carbon fibre”.

Best Naval Architecture
Raven’s win in this category was based on her stability and comfort under sail as well as her unrivalled performance, which is achieved through further developments of America’s Cup foiling technology. The judges praised her technical advances and called her “a naval architecture marvel”.

Canting T foils produce lift, side force and dynamic righting moment when sailing fast. The T foil canting angle is adjusted for each point of sail, and the foils’ flap angle is adjusted to target the optimum heel angle. Her angle of heel rarely exceeds 10° even when Raven is fully powered up on a high-speed reach, so the comfort level for passengers on board increases significantly compared to a traditional monohull.

Innovation Of The Year
In an award category where finalists included some of the most innovative motor yachts in the world, Raven scored yet another win for her ‘bird’s nest’ passenger cockpit. True innovation was defined by the judges as “something that has never been done before but could be replicated on other yachts”.

Raven’s bird’s nest is both a stylistic and a functional innovation. It pays homage to the birdcage of the Maserati Tipo 61 – an intricate space frame structure with a windscreen frame recessed into the bodywork. The bird’s nest provides a safe, comfortable and sheltered space where guests can observe and enjoy the fast-paced sailing action.

The judges said: “The innovation lies in its design, which has open-lattice windows positioned within the cockpit itself, in a band around the central cockpit to allow natural light to flow into the interior below. A folding canopy top serves as a sprayhood to protect the cockpit when open, then folds down flush with the deck to become a huge sunpad.”

About Raven
A unique and game-changing superyacht, Raven is truly in a class of her own. She is one of the most advanced, extreme and sophisticated vessels that Baltic Yachts has ever launched in more than half a century at the cutting edge of boatbuilding.

Raven’s highly original concept was developed on behalf of her visionary owner by the Finnish designer Jarkko Jämsén and his team at Helsinki-based Aivan design agency, who are also responsible for her exterior and interior styling. Her naval architecture and structural engineering, by Botin Partners and Pure Engineering, draw upon a wealth of experience at the cutting edge of America’s Cup development.

Raven is the first superyacht ever to use T foils on canting side arms to support a large proportion of her displacement under sail. Her key features include a wide range of unique innovations. The full extent of her performance is a closely guarded secret, but she is definitely the fastest true superyacht currently afloat.

DIMENSIONS
LOA                             34.00 m
DWL                            33.10 m
Beam                           7.40 m
Draft                            4.80 m
Displacement              55 tons (light craft)

CONCEPT, DESIGN AND BUILD TEAM

Concept: Jarkko Jämsén
Naval architect: Botin Partners
Exterior and interior design: Jarkko Jämsén
Structural Engineering: PURE Design and Engineering
Build project manager: Garth Brewer, A2B Marine Projects
Manager Raven Sailing team & Owner’s project manager: Klabbe Nylöf
Baltic Yachts Project Management: Sam Evans, Mattias Svenlin