snowytrees I am wondering if this is the case of Google knowing you too well or Kagi failing.
To begin with 'mariners' is a somewhat vague query as shown by completely valid 'mariners 6 & 7' results about probes to Mars in my results. Remember Kagi does not know anything about you, your interests, your past search history or your past search clicks. Google knows and stores all of that - without asking.
Can this be remedied by you being a bit more specific, sacrificing a bit of convenience for better privacy?
Also remember kagi has tools to "teach it" what you like. I am seeing results from sites you mention like lookoutlanding.com and seattletimes.com. Assuming they too appear to you but bit further down the page, why not tell Kagi these are the sites you prefer (by using the crystal orb). Google took all that about you automatically, we are not doing that.
Curious to hear your further thoughts on how should we approach this.
