Ta Shing, widely regarded as Taiwan’s top yard, laid up her hull by hand with vinylester outer layers against osmosis, sealed a single iron casting inside the glass of the keel so there are no keel bolts, and sent most of the boats out with teak decks over a balsa-cored deck. She was built for only a few years from 1986, with an aft cockpit or as a pilot-house, and in a limited number.
She is beamy and long on the waterline, a cutter with a bowsprit. The race’s own page for her calls her stiff, close-winded and fast even in a light breeze; Good Old Boat says the design puts seakindliness, comfort and tracking before light-air speed and pointing. Her water tanks are stainless steel; her fuel tanks left the yard in black iron, which has proved prone to corrosion.
In the Golden Globe she is Spirit, of 1986, which Guy deBoer found on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 2019 and prepared over three years, the mast shortened by a metre and a half and the rig reinforced to survive a roll. Spirit ran onto the rocks of Fuerteventura’s north coast at night on 18 Sep 2022, a few hours after passing the Lanzarote gate, was rebuilt, and started again in 2026.
One boat, two starts, no finish yet: what the race has measured of her is short stretches, and this page fills as she sails.
Her one past start: aground, the north coast of Fuerteventura, day 14.
One started: racing now.
A port lower-shroud chainplate that the race had already seen lifting from the deck with hairline cracks at the Les Sables inspection worsened at sea, and Guy deBoer entered Marina Rubicón on 18 Sep 2026 for repairs, which moved Spirit into Chichester class with an independent survey required before resuming. Loading the rig in port then showed significant hull deformation near the mast (the D2 shrouds had been slack and, once tensioned, inverted the hull line), the Green Card was cancelled pending the survey process, and on 26 Sep the boat was still in the marina with repairs under way and a surveyor’s sign-off plus a 100-mile sea trial required before a new Green Card. With the repairs done and the surveyor and race management satisfied, Guy deBoer left Lanzarote on 5 Oct 2026, after more than two weeks in port, and Spirit sails on in Chichester class, outside the main rankings.
One started: ended early.
After more than 30 hours awake reaching the Lanzarote film gate, Guy deBoer sat down in the cockpit and fell asleep; the wind eased, the boat turned to port and struck rocks about 50 m off the north coast of Fuerteventura before dawn on 18 Sep 2022. Spirit lay listing 45 degrees and pounded by surf for 40 to 45 minutes before the skipper got ashore with the coastguard’s help, and the race ended there; the port side was holed, and the boat was later taken off the rocks and re-laminated.
In 8 kt of wind and more, where she and the other designs have twenty legs or more each, her largest gain is on a close reach in 8–12 kt, +8%, and her largest loss, on a broad reach in 8–12 kt, −1%.
| Wind | upwind 0–60° | close reach 60–90° | reaching 90–130° | broad reach 130–160° | running 160–180° | Legs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 68 | ||||||
| 110 | ||||||
| 96 | ||||||
| 60 | ||||||
| 20–25 kt | – | – | – | – | – | 10 |
| 25 kt and more | – | – | – | – | – | 2 |
What the record and the figures support, point by point, and what they weigh against her.
On 18 Sep 2022 Spirit was pounded on the lava rocks of Fuerteventura for forty to forty-five minutes by Guy deBoer’s account, listing forty-five degrees in the surf; the race’s report at the time said the hull was fine. Her port side was holed, a hole Guy deBoer said “you could have driven your car through”; a mould was built and the hole re-laminated in five weeks, and she started again in 2026.
A single iron casting glassed into the keel. Her ballast is 43% of her displacement, 7th of 17 of the designs that have raced.
Beam 3.59 m, 1st of 17; waterline 9.27 m, 2nd of 17; hull speed 7.4 kt, 2nd of 17.
Displacement 9,231 kg, 3rd of 17; sail area to displacement 15.1, 9th of 17, figures for the design as drawn; Spirit’s mast is a metre and a half shorter than the design’s.
Yet like for like her boats measured +4% against the other designs in the same wind and angle: the sailors are in that figure.
Teak decks screwed down over a balsa core, where water can find its way in through the screws, and chainplates buried behind fine joinery where they are hard to inspect: a rust stain or a leak at a cover is the warning. Spirit started 2026 after the race saw a chainplate with hairline cracking at the Les Sables inspection and let it pass; on 18 Sep 2026 she put into Marina Rubicón, Lanzarote, for worsening trouble at a port lower shroud chainplate, on the side holed in 2022, and a test under rig load there found the hull deforming near the mast.
Built for only a few years from 1986 and in a limited number, which Good Old Boat says makes her relatively rare.
- Robert H. Perry Yacht Designers, “Sail & Spar Plan”, design no. 167, 15 Jan 1986, in the Baba-Panda-Tashiba owners’ archive (the design number and the year)
- Good Old Boat, “Tashiba 36” (the years built, the limited number, what the design puts first)
- Listings Port, “Ta Shing Tashiba 36” and its earlier review “Tashiba 36” (the yard, the hull, the ballast, the layouts, the tanks, the teak decks, the chainplates)
- Grabau International, a 1987 Tashiba 36 for sale (the layup, the encapsulated iron, the stainless tanks)
- The race’s skipper page for Guy deBoer (the design, the boat found in 2019, the rig) and its report of the 2022 grounding, goldengloberace.com
- Yachting Monthly: the 2022 skipper profile (the preparation, the rig); “It was a bad decision by the skipper” (the grounding, the lava rocks, the minutes); “Not in it for the spiritual experience” (the hole and the rebuild)
- The race’s news and Guy deBoer’s own posts of September 2026 (the chainplate at the Les Sables inspection, the stop at Marina Rubicón, the hull test)
- The figures: the designer's sail plan of 15 Jan 1986 and the builder's brochure (35 ft 11 in, 30 ft 5 in, 11 ft 9¼ in, 5 ft 6 in, 20,350 lb, 8,740 lb, 703 sq ft). Spirit's mast was shortened by 1.5 m before this race, so her rig is smaller than the design's; the race's skipper page (Guy deBoer) prints 31.5 ft on the waterline and 12 ft of beam; the owners' site prints a dealer's sheet with 21,820 lb (9,920 kg).
Why her races ended:
- Golden Globe Race, race timeline, entries of 18 and 20 Sep and 5 Oct 2026 (“leaves Lanzarote aboard Spirit following structural repairs and approval from the surveyor and race management”)
- Golden Globe Race, “Daily Report: GGR 2026 Day 17”, 23 Sep 2026 (“Testing under rig load revealed significant hull deformation near the mast area”)
- Golden Globe Race YouTube, Guy deBoer live from Lanzarote, 18 Sep 2026 (Don McIntyre: “The port side lower is lifting”; noticed at the safety inspection)
- Golden Globe Race YouTube, Henry Wootton live, 18 Sep 2026 (Don McIntyre: “structural problem with the rear lower chain plate on the port side”; into the marina, Chichester)
- Golden Globe Race YouTube, Day 13 tracker update, 19 Sep 2026 (chainplate “coming out of the deck” with “hairline cracking” at the Les Sables safety inspection; independent survey required)
- Golden Globe Race YouTube, Guy deBoer interview, 20 Sep 2026 (first saw the chainplate “At LSO”; Eli van den Broek hired, about 30 man-hours for the chainplate repair)
- Golden Globe Race YouTube, Day 16 tracker update, 22 Sep 2026 (“Guy’s green card has been canceled until such time as we go through all of the relevant processes”)
- Golden Globe Race YouTube, Day 17 tracker update, 23 Sep 2026 (D2s “flapping in the breeze” on arrival; under rig load the hull shape “went from being a nice curve to being it inverted”)
- Golden Globe Race YouTube, Day 20 tracker update, 26 Sep 2026 (“major structural issues ... with the hull ... separate to the chain plates, but it’s fixable”; surveyor sign-off and a 100-mile sea trial before a new Green Card; “Guy will absolutely continue”)
- YB Tracking, Golden Globe Race 2026 tracker (Spirit stationary at 28.858° N 13.817° W, Marina Rubicón, from 18 Sep 14:10 UTC through 26 Sep 12:00 UTC)
- Guy deBoer, Facebook (Spirit Adventures 56), “A quick update from Lanzarote”, 22 Sep 2026
- Golden Globe Race, “GGR entrant Guy deBoer runs onto rocks at night in Canaries while the fleet moves through the first film gate”, 18 Sep 2022
- Yachting Monthly, “'It was a bad decision by the skipper': Guy de Boer on the grounding which leaves him out of the Golden Globe Race”, 21 Sep 2022
- Yachting Monthly, “'Not in it for the spiritual experience,' says Guy deBoer ahead of the Golden Globe Race”, 31 Jul 2026 (port side holed, five-week re-lamination, gear stolen)
- Wikipedia, “2022 Golden Globe Race” (retired 18 Sep 2022, “Hit a rock north off Fuertaventura”)
The same hull in two races:
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.