Mirage sailboats: two unrelated builders, one shared name
"Mirage" on a sailboat's transom names two entirely separate companies that happened to choose the same word, decades and a border apart. Mirage Yachts Limited, founded in Pointe-Claire, Quebec by Dick and Irene Steffen, built the bulk of the fiberglass cruisers and racer-cruisers that carry the Mirage name today, from the flagship Mirage 24 in 1972 through the yard's 1989 closure. Mirage Manufacturing, a Gainesville, Florida shop founded by Ken Fickett, built a smaller run of racing sailboats under the same name, including the Mirage 5.5, before shifting its business toward powered trawler yachts. The two companies never merged, shared no ownership, and built no boats together.
Origins and ownership
Mirage Yachts Limited was a pioneering Canadian sailboat manufacturer based in Pointe-Claire, Quebec, building fiberglass recreational sailboats for coastal cruising and racing. Dick and Irene Steffen founded the company in 1972 specifically to compete with C&C Yachts, particularly in smaller boats, and its first production model, the Mirage 24, launched that same year as the new company's flagship. Over the yard's run, the Steffens' company built more than 1,000 boats across 15-plus models ranging from 24 to 39 feet, work Good Old Boat's builder directory credits with blending European aesthetics and North American practicality, before closing in 1989 — ending, in Good Old Boat's words, a key era in Canadian yacht building.
Mirage Manufacturing's story starts earlier and separately, with founder Ken Fickett, who began boatbuilding as a boy working afternoons in one of the last wooden boat shops on the Miami River. He later started his own company, Mirage Manufacturing, in Gainesville, Florida, at the same address the shop still occupied more than 30 years afterward. Fickett's yard built MORC racing sailboats, high-performance airplanes, and offshore sportfishing boats before pivoting toward a line of trawler yachts, the Great Harbour series — a shift company histories credit partly to Vice President Denny Keller, whose administrative work freed Fickett to concentrate on the trawlers' engineering and design.
The designers
The Quebec-built lineup is largely a Robert Perry design story. Perry drew the Mirage 33, one of the company's bestsellers, which Practical Sailor called "a great family cruiser," and the same partnership also produced the Mirage 25 and Mirage 35. Bruce Kirby partnered with the Quebec yard as well: the Kirby 25, a one-design racer, appears in Good Old Boat's builder directory as a 1978 Mirage Yachts Ltd. boat, tying Kirby's design to the Pointe-Claire company rather than either of the other Mirage marques.
Mirage Manufacturing's sailboats came from a different pair of hands. Fickett himself designed the Mirage 5.5, an International Offshore Rule Mini Ton class racer built at the Gainesville yard from 1975 to 1983. Naval architect Bruce Kelley designed two other Florida-built boats sold under the Mirage name, the Mirage 28 and the Mirage 338/34.
Construction through the eras
Practical Sailor's review of the Mirage 33 documents a solid fiberglass hull and a balsa-cored deck finished with a non-skid gel coat, built at the company's Vaudreuil, Quebec facility. The rest of the Quebec-built lineup shares the fiberglass-hull construction: the 25, 27, and 35 are all recorded as fiberglass-hulled boats, with the 35 additionally fitted with a lead fin keel and an internally-mounted spade rudder. Florida's Mirage Manufacturing boats were fiberglass-hulled as well — the Mirage 28 and Mirage 338/34 both carry fiberglass hulls, the 338/34 built with a fin keel.
Lines and generations
The clearest line runs through the Quebec company's early flagship: the Mirage 24, introduced in 1972 with a structurally robust racing design, eventually transformed into the Mirage 33 — by then a Robert Perry design in its own right. The Mirage 35 followed directly from that boat, developed from the 1982 Mirage 33 and differing mainly in a reverse transom, a slightly heavier build, and two additional feet of length. Mirage Manufacturing's Florida-built line shows a different kind of evolution: after establishing itself with racing sailboats like the Mirage 5.5, the company moved away from sailboats entirely, eventually building the Great Harbour trawler series instead.
Who Mirage is for
Buyers drawn to the Quebec-built Mirages are shopping a marque Good Old Boat describes as blending European styling with North American practicality — affordable, performance-oriented boats spanning a wide size range, from the C&C-competing Mirage 24 to Robert Perry's larger family cruisers like the 33 and 35, with Bruce Kirby's one-design Kirby 25 sitting apart as a dedicated racer. Buyers who instead find a Florida-built Mirage are looking at a much smaller, more specialized run: the Mirage 5.5 is a trailerable Mini Ton racer with a swing keel, while the Kelley-designed Mirage 28 and 338/34 round out a sailboat program that Mirage Manufacturing eventually left behind for trawler-yacht building.
