She has a long keel, a transom-hung rudder and a cutter’s rig. Kraken has a broad bow platform; Second Wind carried a tubular bowsprit. Kraken’s owners found her responsive, comfortable and seakindly; Listings Port’s sheet calls the design sluggish in light air, under 10 kt of wind.
Second Wind raced the Golden Globe in 2022 under Elliott Smith, the youngest entrant of that race, who brought her from Virginia to Saint Augustine, Florida, and did most of the refit living aboard, with a team, friends and family helping. Her bowsprit broke in half off South Africa on 22 Nov 2022, was repaired over three days at anchor in Simon’s Town and bent again on 18 Dec in the Indian Ocean; after more than ten climbs of the mast to shorten the forestay, the spare stay and the tools went overboard, and she reached Fremantle under a jury rig on 19 Jan 2023 and retired. The design stays on the race’s list.
One boat, one race, as far as Fremantle: what the race has measured of her is thin.
Her one past start: retired at Fremantle, day 137.
One started: ended early.
The bowsprit broke in half off South Africa on 22 Nov 2022 (bent bobstay and starboard tubing, cracked port tubing), was repaired over three days at anchor in Simon’s Town, and bent up again on 18 Dec; more than ten mast climbs in a 3 m swell to shorten the forestay and bypass the bowsprit ended with the spare stay and tools lost overboard, leaving the boat under staysail and double-reefed main with the rig held by the inner forestay and backstay. Elliott Smith sailed 5,000 miles under that jury rig to Fremantle, arriving 19 Jan 2023, and retired there because there was no time to repair and pass the Hobart gate before it closed on 31 Jan.
In 8 kt of wind and more, where she and the other designs have twenty legs or more each, her largest gain is running in 16–20 kt, +1%, and her largest loss, on a broad reach in 12–16 kt, −28%.
| Wind | upwind 0–60° | close reach 60–90° | reaching 90–130° | broad reach 130–160° | running 160–180° | Legs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 201 | ||||||
| 165 | ||||||
| 214 | ||||||
| – | 119 | |||||
| – | – | 75 | ||||
| – | – | – | 24 |
What the record and the figures support, point by point, and what they weigh against her.
Lead ingots sealed and entirely encapsulated in the fibreglass of the keel, and on the late boats a lead shoe of about a thousand pounds epoxied under it.
Mirage, a hull of 1978, is “a heavily constructed, hand laid fiberglass world cruising yacht”, in the words of the Kaiser family’s brokerage; “exceptional structural strength and heavy-weather capability”, says Listings Port’s sheet of the design.
Kraken’s owners, who cruised her for two and a half years in Florida, the Bahamas and the Eastern Caribbean, found her “responsive, maneuverable, comfortable, and seakindly”; “excellent tracking and balance under sail”, says Listings Port’s sheet, from the full keel and the cutter’s rig.
Water tanks of a hundred and eight gallons on Listings Port’s sheet, over four hundred litres; the Notice of Race asks for at least two hundred and sixty litres of drinking water aboard (K.2.1).
“Sluggish performance in light air (under 10 knots)”, and not a “light-air flyer”, says Listings Port’s sheet, which puts it down to her displacement to length and a relatively modest sail area to displacement. Kraken’s owners reminded each other she was “too small, too heavy”.
Displacement to length 412, 8th of 17; sail area to displacement 14.9, 12th of 17.
Under 8 kt of wind her boats measured −14% against the other designs, and in 20 kt and more −6%.
Second Wind’s tubular bowsprit broke in half on 22 Nov 2022 and, repaired, bent again on 18 Dec; her race ended under a jury rig at Fremantle. Kraken has a broad bow platform instead, “much more sensible than a bow sprit”, in her owners’ words.
Listings Port’s buyer’s checklist: many were built with iron or steel fuel tanks deep in the bilges, which can rust from the outside in, and the deck is cored, often with balsa, which can saturate and delaminate under poorly bedded hardware.
Kraken’s owners found her nine-foot tiller awkward; on Kraken two engine mounts broke and the propeller shaft snapped.
About 30 to 35 built at Wilmington, Delaware. In September 2026 Boatsign listed two in the United States, at twenty and twenty-nine thousand dollars, and West Yachts, a broker at Anacortes, Washington, a hull of 1979.
- Yacht View Brokerage’s history of the Kaiser family (the designer, the yard, the number built, Mirage)
- Good Old Boat, “There and Back Again” (the owners of Kraken), and its sail data for the Kaiser Gale Force (the first year)
- doubleenders.com on the Gale Force 34 (the ballast and the lead shoe), and Listings Port’s sheet for the Gale Force (the first year, the number built, the tanks, the review and the buyer’s checklist)
- The race’s skipper page for Elliott Smith, its 2022 timeline and “Youngest Golden Globe entrant faces retirement”, goldengloberace.com
- Yachting Monthly: the 2022 profile of Elliott Smith (the purchase and the refit); “I am pretty confident my bowsprit is strong enough to keep going” (the repair in Simon’s Town)
- Notice of Race 2026: J.1.1 (bowsprits not measured), J.1.2 (the approved designs) and K.2.1 (drinking water)
- Boatsign’s and West Yachts’ listings of the Gale Force 34, September 2026 (the used market)
- The figures: the race's skipper page (Elliott Smith) for the length, waterline, beam, draft and displacement (10.4 m, 8.4 m, 3.2 m, 1.6 m, 8,754 kg); ballast from the sail data Good Old Boat reproduces (7,000 lb; lead, per Listings Port) and sail area from Listings Port's sheet (669 sq ft), the race's page printing neither; no builder's document was found. The sail data and Listings Port print 18,000 lb (8,165 kg) for displacement, and 39 ft overall, evidently with the bowsprit; the ballast share here is the sail data's own pair, 7,000 lb of 18,000 lb, 39%.
Why her races ended:
- Golden Globe Race, skipper page “Elliott Smith” (“Retired: January 19 2023 – rig failure”; “5000 miles under jury rig”; “did not have time to repair and get through the Hobart gate closing before 31st January”)
- Golden Globe Race, “GGR timeline 2022” (entries 22 Nov, 25 Nov, 18 Dec, 19 Dec 2022 and 19 Jan 2023)
- Golden Globe Race, “Youngest Golden Globe entrant faces retirement and Race leader under threat”, 20 Dec 2022
- Yachting Monthly, “Golden Globe Race: 'I am pretty confident my bowsprit is strong enough to keep going'”, 14 Dec 2022
- Wikipedia, “2022 Golden Globe Race” (retirement table: “Retired in Australia after breaking the bowsprit”, 19 January 2023, citing GGR “Day 136”)
What the figures mean. Waterline: the longer, the faster a heavy hull can go. Hull speed: 1.34 × √waterline in feet, the old rule of thumb. Displacement to length: above 300 is heavy; every design here is but the OE 32. Sail area to displacement: under 16 is under-canvassed by modern lights. The middle line is the median of the designs that have the figure: seventeen, or fewer where a source does not give it. Lengths are printed to the centimetre and areas to a tenth of a square metre, whatever the source’s own precision, and the ratios are worked from the figures as printed here.
How she is measured. Every 4-hour leg with a model wind on which the boat was moving (0.2 kt and more): this race’s since the start, and each boat’s whole race in 2018 and 2022, to her finish or her retirement (what a boat sailed after she retired is not counted). A leg’s wind is the model wind at its two ends, averaged as vectors, so its speed is that of the mean wind (a few legs of 2018 and 2022 carry the wind at one end only). The past races have no ocean current, so all three are measured alike: speed over the ground, and the wind’s angle off the course made good. Like for like sets each leg against the other designs’ legs of the same race in the same 3 kt of wind and 15° of angle; the heat map and the polar set her median in each wind and angle, over all her legs there, against the other designs’ medians in the races she sailed, each race weighted by her legs in it. Every figure is a median, and each measures the boat as she was sailed: the sailor, her sails and the state of her hull are in it, a hull under barnacles too. More on the Method page.