Do we NEED a BIGGER Boat? - Kraken 50 Review | S09E09

so sailing around the world is risky no matter how hard you try you're never going to completely eliminate the risk but what if you could buy a boat that eliminated as much risk as humanly possible without sacrificing Comfort well you'd be buying a expensive boat designing and building a Bluewater boat is always a compromise between three things seaworthiness comfort and affordability now for most of human history history seaworthiness was the main factor to consider when choosing a boat for longdistance voyaging but today the vast majority of new Blue Water Boats are designed from the ground up to be sold at boat shows and seaworthiness is something that's just not very marketable since green Sailors have a hard time seeing seaworthiness at a glands so boats that value seaworthiness struggle to compete when their Interiors are smaller and their price tags are bigger than the rest of the competition at these boat shows but there's one upand cominging boat builder that just Flatout refuses to play this game Kraken Yachts led by founder dick bont have decided that they will stop at nothing to build the most seaworthy BluWater long-distance voyaging sailboat in the world and they plan on doing it without sacrificing Comfort which I'll be the first to admit does make them a little pricey so it really begged the question what do you get when you spend over a million dollars on a blue water sail boat we were given the opportunity this week to answer that question when we were invited to take a tour of the Kraken yard as well as to take out a kraken 50 for a test sale and to do a full review but after this experience we've got another question that we need to answer is it time for us to upgrade that is beautiful oh my gosh you can do the whole thing onehanded well dick there's no nothing quite like sailing a boat that's going to be yours I'd like to make that dream come trure okay so we are here at Kraken headquarters in the probably coolest boat yard office or boat building office that I've ever seen in my life because we can see like all the boats being built right down there this is a kraken team hello Kraken team thank you for having us and then over here this is Dick Bowman owner hi thanks for coming so dick has been enough to give us a tour of the facilities see how Krakens are made let's get down there and check it out okay so we are now going to be looking at the underbody of this is a kraken 50 right this is a 50 to me what I really have found fascina about Krakens is that they take the underbody very seriously and they've gone further than anybody in making sure that the underbody is strong and has good performance and they've done that with with this Keel here and this is the zero Keel it's called the zero Keel cuz there are zero bolts it's an integral ke it means this and this is all made out of one piece in a standard integral kill to get the weight into it you've got to stack it up high but in uh the zero kill all the ballast is in that torpedo and that gives you fantastic writing moment when we got attakus one I wanted a full Keel because I wanted an integrated ballot basically right like you want your ke glassed into the hull but there is so many performance drawbacks to that Hull shape this has every single benefit of a full ke and yet it's got all the performance benefits of a bolted on uh fin Keel and yet it's got a cruiser shape to it right it's not super high aspect it's long and then like you said you get the ballast all the way down at the bottom another thing I'd like to just draw to your attention Jordan while we're here you wouldn't notice it unless it's pointed out there's a very shallow V here what's easier to build is a nice radius it's simple but there's your slamming and a kraken doesn't slam it's got a cut into the wave and so that's why we put this this in the forefoot here yeah and you can definitely see it as you move back and forth there's no the Cradle coming back this way it runs right down into the stem of the KE there this is a a critical area of course is what's going on back here yeah so look at that you got a full skag so the rudder's completely protected and then you've got the rudder connected and pivoting at the very base of the skag yeah but what you can't see but we will show you inside here is a massive stainless steel beam and that comes up and inside the hle and all of this is protecting the V element of the rudder so this is the 58 I mean it looks like a big boat this is so cool like it's hard for me to not understate how fun it is to look at a boat in this state of completion for example this is all like high density foam so all of the bulkheads are wow that's we don't use any PL that makes it so strong and saves weight every single bulkhead is glassed so substantially to the hull so next dick wants to show me the Krakens uh really unique chain plate Arrangement that they've got and to just kind of preface this we were just chatting about how you know one of art sailing Heroes John kretchmer he just had a dismasting recently and I bring that up to talk about how common of an issue it is how serious of an issue it is and how it happens even to people that are quite knowledgeable and quite aware of how boat systems fail and what to do to maintain M them and so it's a real problem so dick has a really interesting solution to the issue of keeping the stick up and on the boat in a kraken this is the chain plate toggle you look at the weight and the thickness of this metal it's huge but it doesn't run down here as it would in a normal uh chain plate Arrangement this has a bar that runs through the center of this the actual chain plate stops about here and the bar runs in here either side and this chain plate goes in under the H flange inside here is carbon fiber too and then the deck goes on and then the ball work goes on the top of that and the only way that you could that can ever fail is nothing to do with metal fatigue you would have to pull this bar you'd have to pull that out through this triple layer of deck it's not POS POS and therefore your chain plate can never fail what we've done is we've eliminated the possibility that metal fatigue can cause you to lose your rig the whole metal fatigue concept I think is easy to grasp when you think about the best way to break a paper clip so the simplest way to break a paper clip is you just bend it over and over and over and over again in the same spot and then it'll break and that's exactly what happens to chain plates it's like you get that same exact Bend 10,000 times or whatever like little micro poles on it right and instantaneous forces you know just giving it a little bit of a bend and eventually that can break it through the center of this is this bloody great bar wow that thing is heavy here in in the metal Workshop now let's talk about substantial boats that that don't sink that's what's in the center of that skeg yeah that's the baby that's what's in the inside of the boat that's what's protecting the that's what's stopping the orcas tear it off and that's what's going to stop you being wrecked because your steering's been that compromis when you go on yeah that's amazing and it's like not only is it big that way but I mean this thing is thick dude what is that like half inch or something yeah that 10 mil yeah that's crazy oh yeah quick visit to the doctor and I'll be back to filming if you want to build boats like kren you have to give up on what oh W this is awesome this is our CNC cutting machine this is cutting precise CNC so that the joinery is perfect that's a kraken fiddle and it's radiused on the inside no kidding wo that is super cool wow I've never seen a nice piece of joinery the difference is when you're holding it it feels good straight flat Edge on there wouldn't wouldn't feel the same yeah yeah okay so we are now in the lamination shed yeah we're this is a separate uh shed Shipyard the boats are demolded here once they're finished they're taken out up the road and they go into the top shed you've just been visited and here you see the mold just about to the point that we're just about to start laminating a new hole we got two more layers of wax and polishing to go then the next thing is gel coat spraying and then after that we put the skin coat that has to go where the gel CO's wet and after that we lay up the dry fibers then we Infuse and here you can see why I can tell you that there is no movement in a cracken hole that chain plate is bonded in as you know underneath then it comes down it's bonded to this Frame mhm and this Frame runs all the way down the boat all the way down here right into the bottom of the kill mhm and you don't need a structure engineer to tell you that ain't going anywhere ever right and that's the difference of the Kraken really that's the major difference and so tell me the story about how you founded Kraken it was quite tough to find a boat with all the criteria that I really wanted in a boat that's to say an integral kill uh very heavily laid up Hull fully protected Rudder with a full gig and all of a sudden the whole industry seemed to have got hold of all of those core ideas that have been the basis of ocean voyages ever since got all of that L went no I tell you what we're going in a different direction because of the miles I've done and know uh that you have to have a boat that you can completely rely on in all of the tough conditions that occur and has been drisk as far as you can drisk it all right so we are going to now actually get to test sale a kraken 50 which is this beautiful bad boy right behind these beautiful ladies that's right is's got her Captain outfit on she is very unimpressed she needs a nap we going to test the sleeping quarters first of the Kraken 50 but look at that boat man that is [Music] beautiful hey what you doing are you having fun all right buddy show us around what do you think well we start in the main Salon which is super super spacious and just really comfortable I really like how there's a lot of lighting around so I don't feel like I'm in this dark cave yeah I can see the sail from here actually I can see the sky waa that's so trippy I so like sitting in the main Salon you can take a look at the sales that's cool so right here is the main Salon table and then right here is the the captain's seat which holy moly I've seen pictures of this and this is easily my favorite part of these boats because you can basically stand your entire watch here sitting with all of the information in front of you and complete visibility like you can see the Horizon everywhere around you and as dick was just saying you actually get a view under the sails from here because you're kind of forward and you're so close to the deck so you actually have a better view here than you would from the cockpit the my favorite parts of the Interior are going to be the captain's chair here and then what I'm about to show you which is so clever first of all this part of the Siti slides out of the way you open this door oh buddy look at this this is the coolest equipment space and engine space I think I've ever seen on a boat that's like under 60 or 70 ft this is all the electrical all the plumbing the water maker the generator the fuel filtration system the main engine all the equipment that you're going to need to do maintenance on regularly is all in here maintenance and doing a good job with maintenance fully relies on accessibility like how easy is it to get to all that stuff and I think there's a lot of boats the vast majority of boats being built now in this size range they're going to have have larger Interiors they're going to have bigger bathrooms they're going to have like everything's going to be a little bit bigger but they're not going to have this if you're not careful about how you design a boat like this with all these complicated systems you're going to spend half your life maintaining them because they're so hard to get to but if you have easy access to it and you can easily repair and fix those things as they break that means that it's going to take up a minimal part of your life to keep these systems functioning so we got the galley here um I guess this is an induction stove gimb yeah so one of the core premises of these Kraken boats is to try to reduce risk as much as possible right and one of the major risks for a cruising sailboat is fire and so dick was very adamant about making sure that there's no gas on board so there's absolutely no propane all the cooking is done with electric induction just to reduce the risk of fire that much and you know propane is is a real issue on boats so I think that is cool and not only that we know on attacus 2 it has been a little inconvenient trying to fill up our propane tank in every country we go to and there are different fittings and everything so not having to do that would be awesome yeah also we have ventilation we're cooking and that actually ventilates like it's not just a grease catchment like filter that actually takes the air and throws it outside which is really cool because again on atus 2 it's kind of like this enclosed box or like we are in a cave and if we have all of our hatches closed maybe because it's raining or something all the oils and everything from cooking kind of build up eventually and as far as prep space there's plenty in this Galley they've got a custom cutting board here that fits here so you can do your prep on this side and what's pretty cool is on the left here you've got a compost bin that you can remove just toss it overboard and then on this side you've got the trash so I'm just cutting cutting cutting trash cutting cutting cutting this boom boom boom nice good job buddy now on atus 2 we have a drop- down fridge and freezer so actually accessing all of my fruits and vegetables and meats is kind of a hassle like a lot of times I call it dumpster diving I've got to like jump in there and like root around and try to find what I actually need it is such a pain to go as I call it dumpster diving so if I wanted to access that section down there you have to lift all the stuff out take everything out right and that's just not practical when we're underway and when we're at anchor it's just really annoying and I don't like doing it this is really cool because it's like everything I need is right at my fingertips they're drawers so I can organize this so easily and without you know dumpster diving I can get what I want immediately last feature of this super cool Galley is I'll just demonstrate it boom boiling hot water in like I don't know 2 seconds yeah is that crazy so this totally literally boiling yeah this totally eliminates the necessity to have a water kettle like this one which can just go flying through the air when you're sailing and scalding hot water flying through the air is not something you want on a sailboat so yeah just so awesome being on camera all day while touring a large facility like Kraken requires a lot of energy but luckily we were sufficiently caffeinated with the help of our new favorite coffee making device and it also happens to be the sponsor of this episode Aero press Aeropress is a lot like a French press but it makes a much better cup of coffee Aeropress uses a patented 3in1 Brew technology with over 55,000 five-star reviews from over 60 countries Aero press is the best reviewed coffee press on the planet and at just under $50 with all of those positive reviews Aeropress makes a really good gift and we've got an incredible offer for our audience visit Aero press.com adus that's a o p r s.com atius and make sure you use promo code attakus to get 20% off your order that's Aero press.com adus and make sure you use promo code adus at checkout to get 20% off it's time to ditch the drive-thru toss the friend French press and say yes to better mornings fueled by better coffee Aero press ships to the United States as well as 60 other countries throughout the world and I want to say thank you to Aero press for sponsoring this video over here is my cabin wow so yeah look at that I mean that's big man and I like how it's an actual rectangle you know like it's not some funny shape it feels like we're in a hotel room right now wow not a boat and the vents for the air conditioning are like hidden up here and it's so cold in the boat that's one thing we haven't talked about yet like it's a hot day today and it's so pleasant down here that's true yeah but yeah so big closet space on this side and that side and then tons of storage under here what I want to talk about yeah two cool features of the bed one of them is when you're underway and you might be getting jostled around you don't want to fall off the edge of the bed the other side has this as well you actually have it's like a Le CL a Le board ah yeah I'm not going anywhere this would have been great when I was co- sleeping with Issa second cool feature which I'm obsessed with is oh my God look at that I'm not even holding this bad boy up and then I've got all the storage space so I could store like our winter gear or our like camping gear things that we don't use very often or that we use seasonally okay and then we've got the main cabin head yeah I like the head it's got separate shower which is great for a sailboat and up here on the port side we've got a toilet this one is actually really spacious and feels pretty open and on the starboard side you've got this huge shower the heads are definitely small but you've got two separate heads two separate showers that's pretty sweet that's huge for me okay then up forward on the starboard side we've got a double double bunk here Isabella actually took her nap right here and she found it very comfortable um but yeah as far as like having kids or even guests like this is really all the room you need just place to sleep there's a really huge closet behind the door here um for their luggage very simple but gets the job done cabin then we've got the port side cabin so this is the Ford kind of like V birth of the boat but they've actually separated it so that it's two cabins um and this way you could actually fit a lot of crew and passengers on this boat all right I think we've got everything ready to go for a sale yes let's go so how many RPMs does this cruise at what's the 2 three is good it's going to give you about 7 knots this is kraken's application to short-handed sailing yeah there's your winch yeah on there there that's your out hole there oh my gosh you can do the whole thing onehanded yeah yeah one handed that's how simple it is to set and and F the mine okay so going out yeah and then tension and then out keep going keep going out just keep going once you're getting wind in it will start to pull out [Music] anyway okay I'm going to do a quick on Deck tour of the boat and to me I mean there's so much to like about this boat down below but there's so many little thoughts and little ideas put into how the boat sails and how the deck is laid out so it really is just like such a good boat for longdistance voyaging so a couple of things up here is the boat has these two massive cleat on the bow there's two cleat midship and there's two cleat aft and these things are insanely strong like you don't need to worry about if you end up Towing something or getting towed or running out a par anchor or whatever they also are on the cap rail right and then there's no need for fair leads or anything so you're going to get less chafing it's just boom the line goes out to whatever and it doesn't touch anything but the cleat which is awesome couple other things to note are the solent rig which I am a really big fan of a solent rig I mean any kind of rig is going to have compromises right and obviously the big compromise of a solent rig is going to be the necessity to you know furl and unfurl the Genoa when you tack but the nice thing about it is that the jib is actually pretty big so it's not like a stacil on a cutter and you can tack back and forth and beat up a channel if you want with a relatively big sale as opposed to like a cutter where you're doing that with a fairly small sale but the thing I love about the solent rig is you can use the Dual poles on the Mast to pull out the Genoa and pull out the jib for a really quick really easy and yet like ideal downwind RI and then at that point both your head sales are reable so you can have exactly the right amount of sale area up for any amount of wind when going down wind this is actually like one of the simplest things and yet one of the things I'm most excited about the one problem in my book with specialty sales is that they're almost always stored in a cockpit locker and they're almost always stored under a bunch of other stuff right this boat has a sale storage right here on the bow so that you can store your special y Sals right here where you need them another neat thing about this is because this is just a storage area these are watertight bulk heads so if the boat were to impact anything on the bow this whole compartment could fill up the rest of the boat wouldn't be affected then this whole compartment could fill up the rest of the boat wouldn't be affected and that is just a massive safety feature basically everything at the waterline on the bow you know the stem just above the waterline just below the waterline where you could hit something is 18 in of pure fiberglass insanely thick insanely strong and then dick was just saying that they also lay up Kevlar instead of just typical fiberglass to even further strengthen like the entire stem and center line of the boat all the way down to the Keel pretty cool stuff man cuz when you're a th000 miles away from land it's kind of nice knowing that you're probably not going to sink you know so you've got the tall lifeline you've got the triple lifelines which is I don't think I've ever seen that before you've got this little Nook for your foot so that you're not going to slip off of the bull work which is great and all of that keeps you on the boat if you do have to go forward and from what I can tell one of the few reasons you ever would need to go forward would be to set these awesome double pole setup so they look carbon fiber to me I'm assuming they are't which is cool because when you're setting up these things they're kind of massive right so if they're heavy that's kind of a problem but these are going to be for what they are for how strong they are for how big they are they're going to be extremely light yeah and then you've got the Dual setup but what's cool is they're both fixed length to match the sails that you're going to be dealing with so the longer one goes on the Genoa the shorter one goes on the jib so the other thing that's neat about Center cockpits is the ability to have this AF deck area and what they've done here is basically added a tremendous amount of storage in this area below me here is the dedicated life raft storage area and then you've got two big compartments here that are going to be used for just general storage as well as accessing like steerage you can access the rudder post here you can access the bearings the autopilot all that stuff and this whole area down here is a giant storage locker it's so cool to have so much storage you could put inflatable kayaks paddle boards you know snorkle gear like all of that fun stuff that gets wet could all come down in here and then the nice thing about this also is that the bulkhead that's in the front of it is watertight so if you had any kind of collision a Stern you wouldn't be filling the boat with water yeah here we go he 24 ton there's 8 knots of wind and we're doing six and that ain't too bad eh yeah no it's not bad at all life is good well dick there's nothing quite like sailing a boat that's going to be yours soon you know this is awesome man this is really nice yeah I mean we we've got the wind is really light we've got the Maine and the genua up this is what we were talking about right where this is where having the ballast really low in the KE let you have a taller rig lets you have like larger sail areas a standard amount a sail area and so that's why you can get a heavy strong boat to be moving in like a breath of wind like this which is really cool okay so now to the underway command station I mean obviously there's the captain's chair down below but like again this is a really awesome navigation station so you got a really big wheel which is really cool feel very M you know salty holding this thing but what's most important is that this boat is designed to be single-handed or to be sailed with a really small crew right and so I can be here at the helm I see all the information that I need to see in front of me and then I can trim all the sails from right here right I can trim all the sheets in fact on attacus too I can't trim the main sail right I can't pull in on the main sheet but on this boat that's right here so with a hand on the wheel I can trim the main I can also trim the Genoa here using the electric winch heads up guys so there you go it's amazing how much you can do from all right here with very little effort too so a couple other features that I like is the seat here it's like a u seat so if we're healing over you can always find a spot in the chair where you're comfortable you're not going to slide down right there's these tiny seats on either side which is for like we were talking about when you're doing your hand over you know your about to go on your offat you're catching up the next person on all the information they need to know they can sit here as you point everything out before they take over the the big seat this is the standard bimin structure so it's it's almost like a hard top because it's flat it's a much more like robust and and uh rigid grid structure than a typical bimin so just a lot of really nice thought put into how can one person control such a big heavy powerful boat with a relative amount of ease and I think they definitely nailed it yeah so right now I'm furling in the Genoa using my thumb well I got a little bit of help he he's uh easing the genua sheet but you could easily be doing this yourself got it okay ready about ready about ready about uhuh that's what I [Music] thought okay so I'm going to be letting the Geno out using my toe to bring the sheet in okay nice one that is definitely the like uh least effort I've ever put into driving a [Music] [Applause] boat so for everyone in every stage of budget assuming they can't afford a kraken what is your advice in regards to making it happen don't buy the boat for its home Comforts buy the boat that is going to take you across oceans whatever that boat is not necessarily saying a cracken whatever that boat is if you feel Comfort if you feel sec curing it that will enhance your living bold uh experience to a much greater level than Furnishings or you know uh more space you don't give a damn about more space when it's blowing like hell actually you just want to know your boat's not going to break up I just want to say that it's been a real pleasure getting to know your operation and getting to see it getting to spend some time with you and hear all your amazing Stories and uh I just want to say that I for one and I'm a one of many that really appreciate to see someone out there and a team of people out there who are trying to make the best damn product that they possibly can going as far as you possibly can towards making something as excellent as they can I think it's really cool so wow that's really nice it does make it all worthwhile and you know you you say those things I appreciate that and I especially appreciate you know the amount of time you've spent coming and seeing this and it's been it's been great talking about all the [Music] adventures okay Isabella did you have fun on the boat was that so much fun so what did you think of the Kraken 50 buddy yeah I definitely had that kind of like falling in love experience with it you know just being inside and getting cozy with Issa and then feeling how nice the ride was but I was also surprised coming back to attakus after spending a whole day on a million dooll yacht that I'm really happy with our boat you know like I I really I love our home and it really does have everything we need Isabella agrees so obviously the Kraken 50 and the entire Kraken line of sailboats are awesome but the big question kind of becomes are they worth the price and I think that the concept of a boat being expensive is is super relative right like to some people their budget for a blue water boat is over a million dollar and so for people in that situation and for people who want to use money as a way to reduce their risk of sailing long distance sailing offshore sailing to the remote parts of the world then a kraken is the perfect boat for them so that leads me to the next question which is is it time for us to upgrade the short answer is no attakus 2 is the perfect boat for us right now not to mention we don't have a million dollars just sitting in the bank account but I will say that I am totally open to the idea of someday upgrading to a kraken and the reason is because if we want to keep sailing after we have two or even three kids right we've been kind of talking about having more and we wanted to push it and go to really extreme places like Antarctica or Greenland and we wanted to do that with children I would want to reduce our risk as much as possible period And so something like trying to finance a kraken would maybe be a good move for us in that situation but for right now the way that things are going we're very very happy on attakus 2 and we're going to keep sailing her one quick thing I want to mention is that throughout this video we've talked about this concept of seaworthiness and I just wanted to express that I'm kind of grouping a lot into that word or concept of seaworthiness what I really mean is like a boat's ability to be safe and handle well in extreme conditions when offshore but I also mean a boat's ability to survive like a hard grounding when sailing or exploring places where the charting is really poor and inaccurate I also am thinking about situations where like a boat hits another boat at anchor or when a boat hits a floating object when sailing out at Sea right so like there's a lot of situ ations and scenarios that I'm kind of clumping into this concept of seaworthiness but I think you can kind of get the idea of what I'm getting at here and finally dick wanted us to make an announcement on kraken's behalf this is something that's totally new so it's very exciting Kraken has been doing really well with sales they've been selling boats which is awesome and in fact their sales demand is outstripping their production capacity and so they've got some exciting news they are going to be expanding their operation to Poland so they're going to have one site in Poland one site in Turkey they're going to be able to produce way more boats with this new Arrangement personally I'm just thrilled that Kraken is doing well that there is a demand out there for these boats so that's all really exciting stuff if you'd like to learn more check out kraken's website you can also check out their YouTube channel they've got a ton of really cool content about their boats as well as just kind of getting into Dick's brain and investigating his whole approach towards boat building and design and we'll link to both both of those in the description below and finally I want to end this episode on a few words from dick that we had in our interview if you want the adventure then you know you are going outside your comfort zone aren't you and a lot of people have their adventures in their different ways and and that's and that's that's a great thing but don't die thinking I wish I'd done this or I wish I'd done that it is still a very very beautiful world and there is no better way of seeing it from the deck of your own s there's no better way

Channel: Sailing Project Atticus

Views: 171,867

Keywords: “sailboat”, sailing around the world, Sailing around the world on a budget, Project Atticus, atticus project, Allied seawind

Id: EibFAgsJo0Q

Length: 35min 33sec (2133 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024