This is Sybaris, the new 70m superyacht currently under construction at Perini Navi in Italy. At 927 tonnes displacement, the ketch will be the second largest sailing vessel Perini Navi has ever built.

The project has been designed in house by Perini Navi Technical and Design office with naval architecture consultation and sailplan from Philippe Briand.

The hull and superstructure are in aluminium, the rig is carbon fibre and the main and mizzen masts will be a towering 72m and 62m respecting, carrying a total sail area of more than 3,000m2.

Sybaris has centreboard keel and variable draft that goes from 4.54m to 11.74m so that she can be tucked into shallower water. And to get the guests ashore quickly and stylishly there will be two 7m carbon tenders from Cornish company Cockwells, both stowed in a recess below decks.

To improve her sail handling systems, Sybaris will have Carbo-Link rigging by Rondal with a comprehensive rig load monitoring system that uses a series of strain gauges constantly to detects the loads throughout the rig.

She will have a North 3DL sail wardrobe with 1070m² reacher, 635m² jib, 770m² mainsail and a 570m² mizzen.

These are all to be handled by the latest generation of Perini Navi captive winches and furlers. Electric variable speed motors and furlers will improve furling and unfurling times and speed up tacking and gybing. To give an example of the loads handled, the reacher/blade winches pull a maximum load of 35 tonnes and have a line speed of up to 75m a minute.

For the time time aboard a Perini Navi yacht, three variable speed generators will be used via a DC Bus to the vessel’s main electrical grid, with the potential to store excess power in lithium polymer batteries to allows periods of silent running.