Kraken 58 Sails to the European Yacht of the Year Competition

Well, hi everyone. Here we are on, say, SY Hebe, which is Kraken 58 001. We're on a delivery trip from Bodrum to Barcelona, where the Kraken 58 was nominated for the European Yacht of the Year award. That's later on in this month, and we've been having a tough time of this delivery. We've been riding the Meltemi as we left Bodrum, and then we ran into the Levant across the end of the Aegean, and then the Taramonta as we crossed towards Sicily, and finally on the fast run from Sicily to where we are now in Sardinia, we've managed to cop the Mistral as well. So we've had wind speeds of generally 25 on the low side to 35 and 40 on the high side, and everything so far has been forward of the beam, generally between 30 and 60 degrees, so you can imagine it's been a pretty tough trip. The Solent rig has proved an absolute godsend with the wind's hard forward of the beam. The jib has been the sail of choice on the foresails. We've had very little chance to fly the Genoa at all, and the jib has driven us brilliantly, and of course being a blade jib, it's low cut, so it improves stability of the boat. So, what we're demonstrating in this video is one of Cracker's greatest attributes really, because of the zero keel and the very high rig that we are able to carry, and the huge sail area, we are able to sail this boat in very light winds and make good passage. Obviously the whole boat is rigged for heavy weather, but actually you're going to get much, much, much more light winds than you are going to get heavy winds, and when you've got a long passage to do, you need to be able to take advantage of those whispers of winds. We've actually got 7 knots of true wind at the moment. We're around at about 60 degrees to the bow of the boat, and we're making 5. I know that doesn't even seem possible in a boat that's well over 30 tonnes, but they're the figures, and if you just want to try and swing around, I don't know if you will, we can actually show people. Here's the auto. I'll go on this one. We've got 6.3 knots of wind, true wind, and if you look over here, right this second, we're doing 4.7, 4.8. So, we just had up to 8 knots of wind, and we were making 6. That's pretty, pretty, pretty impressive. I'm very impressed myself with this boat. She's going really well. Before we get to Barcelona, now things seem to finally have quietened down. I don't want to count my chickies too much, but yeah, we're looking forward to the last couple of days being, let's say, a little bit easier sailing. But as I say, I mean, it's a maiden voyage of 1,500 miles ish, and the boat's done exceptionally well. Thanks everybody, and thanks for watching.