Mirage 24


The Mirage 24 is a Canadian sailboat, that was designed by Cuthbertson & Cassian as a Midget Ocean Racing Club racer and first built in 1972. The design is out of production.
The boat was built by Mirage Yachts in Canada and was their first production design. It is a development of the Cuthbertson & Cassian designed Northern 1/4 Ton.

Design

Dick and Irene Steffen owned a yacht dealership for C&C Yachts, in Pointe Claire, Quebec. The company had been very successful selling C&C boats, but the C&C line did not offer a boat smaller than the C&C 27 at that time. Dick Steffen was a competitive sailing racer and thought that there would be a good market for a C&C-built 24 foot keelboat for MORC racing. At his request Cuthbertson & Cassian designed the boat, but decided not to proceed with production at C&C. Steffen bought the design from them and founded Mirage Yachts in February 1972 to build the boat.
The Mirage 24 sold well and the company soon had 15 employees building the boat model in their rented second floor facility in Pointe Claire. One factor driving the Mirage 24's strong sales was its racing record in MORC class events. Even 15 years after its introduction a Mirage 24 won the production boat division in the MORC national championships.
Caught off guard by the success of the design, C&C decided to produce a competitor, the C&C 25, which was very similar to the Mirage 24's design. The Mirage 24 continued to sell well and usually beat the C&C 25 in competition.
The Mirage 24 is a small recreational keelboat, built predominantly of fiberglass. It has a masthead sloop rig, a transom-hung rudder and a fixed fin keel. It displaces and carries of ballast.
The boat has a draft of with the standard keel. It has a hull speed of.

Operational history

In a review Michael McGoldrick wrote, "The Mirage 24 belongs in that Canadian Sailboat Hall of Fame if only because it is the boat which launched Mirage Yachts...The Mirage 24 is pretty boat with a fair amount of interior space. This boat did very well in the MORC fleet, and its owners report that its performance really starts to shine in medium winds."

Variants

;Mirage 24
;Mirage 24 SM
;Mirage 24 TM