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Saturday, August 29, 2015

Boats Seen at Burnham – Part 1 – Freedom 21





I should have gone for a sail today. Instead, after taking my wife to a garden centre, I went to Burnham for a walk by the river to see activities associated with Burnham Week. This always starts on August Bank Holiday Saturday.

As usual, when visiting Burnham, I took a look at boats for sale at Clark and Carter. However, this fin keel Freedom 21 doesn’t look as if she is for sale, as I didn’t see a notice to that effect attached to her hull, and I couldn’t find her on the C & C ‘Yachts for Sale’ list.
Freedom 21 sailboats were first built in the US in 1982. Designed by Garry Hoyt, they were rigged with an un-stayed flexible mast and a fully battened mainsail; plus a unique spinnaker system invented by Garry. He calls it the Hoyt Gun Mount. It consists of a spinnaker pole that passes through a tube mounted on a spindle attached to the pulpit. The pole can be shunted to and fro when changing tack. The spinnaker is easily hoisted and taken in by a solo sailor. He can hoist it with a halyard and lower it into a ‘sock’ by means of a downhaul. (See Freedom 21 Demo Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx7bMnQgRoY) This cat rig has the advantage of ease of reefing as with a junk rig, but with the windward efficiency of a Bermudan rig. All control lines are led to the cockpit for speedy and safe handling without the crew having to go on deck.

The boat featured here has a fin keel, but others have been built in the UK with retractable bilge keels. A few had Warwick Collins Tandem Wing Keels. Here’s a good PDF article by Wilfred Bishop with information about Freedom 21 keel types: http://www.freedom21.info/F21KeelOptions.pdf  .

Specification

LOA                                        6.61m
LWL                                        5.39m
Beam                                      2.44m
Draught                                   1.14 (Max)
Displacement                            816 kg

Links

Burnham Week

Garry Hoyt

Freedom 21 Info
 
Freedom 21 – Sailboatdata.com

Freedom 21 Interior Video

Freedom 21 Video

Freedom 21 Video

Freedom 21 Photos

Warwick Collins


1 comment:

  1. Interesting yacht and interesting links -- thanks Bill.

    ReplyDelete