# Freedom 28 Cat Ketch



## sasjzl (Jul 28, 2012)

Any thoughts on the Freedom 28 Cat Ketch out there? I find much info on the larger boats but not a lot on the 28. I plan to sail in the Oriental NC waters and dream of someday crossing the Gulf Stream. Is this boat tough enough for that?

Thanks.


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## JimsCAL (May 23, 2007)

A member of our club had one many years ago. Nice inside. Didn't go upwind worth a damn. Not my cup of tea.


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## eherlihy (Jan 2, 2007)

Not my cup of tea either.

You did ask for "Any thoughts"...


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## sasjzl (Jul 28, 2012)

"Didn't go upwind worth a damn". Helpful.
"Not my cup of tea either.". Not helpful.


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## cdy (Nov 10, 2013)

Owned one in the past - off the wind a good sailing boat - pretty tight in the bow with the forward mast - very forward - would go to Bahamas no problem - fairly shallow draft - nice down below but have to squeeze by aft mast in main cabin, easy to rig and sail , well made - biggest concern - condition of masts - if one broke or was damaged - to fix it would be about the worth of the boat - inspect them well - superficial spider cracks on the mast arent the concern but more major damage or any repairs that were made. Head was very small - mine had a Yanmar which pushed it well


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## Jeff_H (Feb 26, 2000)

I have sailed on the Jay Paris designed Freedom 28 and Freedom 33. I have also been involved in surveys and purchases of these boats riding shotgun with friends or acquaintances who were the purchasers.

These are pretty and charismatic boats with a charm that catches my imagine when I think of them abstractly. The shoal draft is very appealing. They offer a lot of room for their length, but with a slightly compromised layout due to the mast passing through the cabin right forward of the companionway. 

The 28 that I sailed had the sail which wrapped-around the mast rather than the sail being on the track. This was tried because the freestanding mast is larger in diameter and so more aerodynamically turbulent than a stayed mast and so a sail on a sail track would spend its life sailing in bad air on any point of sail above a shallow broad reach. 

I found the whole wrap around sail set up to be a real mess. The sail was hard to raise and adjust. The windward side sail would pull fabric off the leeward side so that the sail ended up with large loose pockets that would flap loudly when beating or on a close reef. Key control lines were obstructed under the sail so that you had to crawl up between the two layers of sail to make certain adjustments. The sail cover was especially difficult to put on and so on. 

The boat did not seem to sail particularly well. As noted by others they do not point well even by cruising boat standards. They are at their best on deep reach but are miserable on a run (wing and wing is tough with the wish-boom boom since the snotter wants to pull the sail to the centerline and there is no way to guy out the forward sail) 

Motion on these boats is very rolly in a chop, with a motion I would describe as wallowing. Beating upwind in any kind of waves these boats seem to hit each wave particularly hard as compared to a boat with a finer bow and less weight in the ends. They also seem to through a surprising amount of spray when they do that. 

As others have mentioned, there is no foredeck to speak of. Anchor handling would seem to be tricky with the mast right there. 

All of these boats that I was around seemed to suffer from some of the same issues. These boats have balsa cored hulls. Like many J-boats of this era (built in the same factory) these TPI boats often had delamination in the hulls and core rot. All of the surveys found pretty large delaminated (18" to 30" diam) areas at the low point of the sheer where the hull to deck joint was partially exposed at the scupper through the toe rail. 

Then there is the mast issue. Carbon fiber is a great material, but it is also fatique prone. It is perfectly sound until it isn't any more. There is no good way to check if it is at its 'use by' date. These masts had started developing cosmetic hairline cracks which do not mean much in themselves, except that they show flexure at that location, and of course flexure causes fatigue. 

I don't know how it is today, but it was harder to get insurance that covered these freestanding carbon rigs. And that gets to the bottom line because if you lose a mast, the boat is totaled. At this point a replacement mast would need to be custom fabricated. The cost to custom fabricate a single carbon fiber mast would buy you a nice reasonably fresh 35 or 40 foot sailboat. There was a time when Freedom owners would claim that almost no Freedoms had ever lost a rig. I am not sure how true that was back then, but its certainly a lot less accurate today. 

Jeff


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## cdy (Nov 10, 2013)

I have help rescue a Freedom 40 when it lost the top half of its aft mast - so it does happen - it had a lighting strike and thought it was repaired - as stated very hard to determine true condition of mast - I have owned a 21 and 28 - sailed on a 40 and been on a 33 - all were pretty good sailors - just you are rolling the dice on the mast issue - if you get the boat for a great deal would be worth the chance but would not pay a premium for one.


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## chef2sail (Nov 27, 2007)

I have a friend with a 40. Turns on the engine rather than beat close hauled. Great cabin


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## Minnesail (Feb 19, 2013)

This isn't from Freedom, it's from makers of smaller cat ketches:
Why a Cat Ketch?

They say several things that seem completely not true.


> The rig fell out of favor not because it was inefficient, but because working sailboats became obsolete, and the recreational sailboats which have been built since, are influenced not by the need for efficiency and speed, but by an artificial rating rule. Such rules, made to "equalize" boats on a race course, often penalized the very things which made a boat fast. So designers' of "modern" boats designed boats that could get the greatest benefit from the lowest rating - and not necessarily the best and fastest boat they could have designed. When ratings were not an issue, the cat ketch has been a rig favored for it's gentle ways. Several designers in recent decades have utilized this rig to great advantage on some contemporary, even avant-garde designs. In head to head competition, cat ketches have performed well.


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## Seaman_3rdClass (Jul 3, 2014)

Now, that's a helpful reply! Btw, are we talking the old Freedom 40, or the newer, late 90s F40/40, which goes to weather just fine, and is a reasonably fast boat (a PHRF of around 100, I believe) and very well made. Despite its relatively heavy displacement (~24,000 lbs), it easily does 8-9 knots with a decent wind, even on a close reach. Having sailed and visited a number of new ca. 40-footers, I would not trade it for any conventionally rigged 40-footer, even new, with a possible exception of the Bluejacket 40, which costs upwards of $400K. It is actually similarly appointed inside, with very similar dimensions to F40/40, also has a self-tacking jib, but of course a conventional, stayed mast.


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## Jeff_H (Feb 26, 2000)

> The rig fell out of favor not because it was inefficient, but because working sailboats became obsolete, and the recreational sailboats which have been built since, are influenced not by the need for efficiency and speed, but by an artificial rating rule. Such rules, made to "equalize" boats on a race course, often penalized the very things which made a boat fast. So designers' of "modern" boats designed boats that could get the greatest benefit from the lowest rating - and not necessarily the best and fastest boat they could have designed. When ratings were not an issue, the cat ketch has been a rig favored for it's gentle ways. Several designers in recent decades have utilized this rig to great advantage on some contemporary, even avant-garde designs. In head to head competition, cat ketches have performed well.


In fact, most of that really is not true. Its like a conversation I had with Olin Stephens some years ago. Someone asked Olin why the schooner rig had died out. Olin's response was pretty classic and one that I often repeat. In essence boats behave as a system. Schooners and ketches work well on boats that have comparatively little stability relative to their drag (i.e. lots of wetted surface and displacement). As hull forms and keels improved, and as sailboats shifted to external ballasting and to denser ballast materials, boats could carry more powerful and efficient rigs. As lower stretch cotton sail cloth (then dacron then the higher modulus stuff) came along sails could be cut more precisely and hold their shape better permitting still more efficient keels and hull forms. So back to Olin's comments; the modern low drag hull-forms, and modern high strength to weight building materials, and better hardware, and modern low stretch cloth made lower efficiency rigs like the schooner (or cat ketch) obsolete in most applications.

What is correct in that quote is that where these rigs come into their own is on work boat style situations where reaching is more important that running or beating and where there is a lot of weight to haul with minimal form or ballast stability to permit a more efficient rig.

It would be easy to think that the racing rules some how forced boats to have Bermuda sloop rigs, but that would be a misconception. Racing rules which forced a rig or hull shape pretty much died with the IOR rule roughly 30 years ago. But even those rules provided a handicap credit to multi-mast rigs and they were still generally not competitive win those rules. In other words, even with a credit for the lower efficiency they were still slower than a comparable sloop rigged boat even with a credit, let alone boat for boat.

But beyond that, If


> Several designers in recent decades have utilized this rig to great advantage on some contemporary, even avant-garde designs. In head to head competition, cat ketches have performed well.


 were true, modern cruising sailboats would still have cat ketch rigs. They don't. And if that quote were true, Freedom would have continued to build cat ketches for as long as they were in business, and that did not happen either.

Respectfully,
Jeff


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## ThereYouAre (Sep 21, 2016)

Minnesail said:


> This isn't from Freedom, it's from makers of smaller cat ketches:
> Why a Cat Ketch?
> 
> They say several things that seem completely not true.


FWIW the cat ketches designed by Graham Byrnes of B&B Yachts seem to do pretty well in the Everglades Challenge and other Watertribe events. A Core Sounds regularly finishes in the top three.

-Hugh


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## Deric (Feb 3, 2008)

Posting for others who may be looking for references on Cat Ketch rigged boat, in specific the Herreshoff 33 Cat Ketch.

As a previous owner of the typical sail rigged boat with the main sail and head sail, I have become a huge fan of the cat ketch. I find the cat ketch to be very forgiving and balanced. I single hand my boat and it is simple.

I once had a conversation with the builder, John Newton of Cat Ketch Yachts, who told me that he was looking to design a very safe boat: meaning, no winches to overrun sheets or get fingers caught, half-wishbone booms with loose footed sail so no chance of getting banged in the head, man overboard rudder with build in step, free standing masts to eliminate points of failure related to cables, and connectors. All these safety points were important to the builder. They are important to me as well as I age.

The ride on the boat, as a result of the flexing of the carbon fiber/s glass masts, is smooth. The masts spill extra energy from wind and act as shock absorbers thus providing a very level healing to the boat that is not dramatic or dynamic. Sailors who race their J 24 boats and have sailed my boat have often commented that is was boring because there was not enough lines and things for them to tweek. The two sails lower the force closer to the boat. The cat ketch does not point as high as those with a perfect slot between sails but most cat ketch owners are looking for comfort more than upwind direction and speed.

Two sheets in the cockpit and no winch makes it very easy to set the angle of sails. The sails on a run can be let all the way out so they are past the mast if one wanted extra safety - no accidental jibe.

The boat is fastest on a broad reach or run.

It is my opinion, boats have pros and cons. The design of the boat is not about which design is better but rather which design best suites the needs of a sailor. In my case I needed comfort; however, for my need for speed I sail my hydrofoil sailboat instead, for sail camping in super shallow areas - _less then 20 inches_ - I will use my 14foot Paradox.

Eric Sponberg designed the free standing masts for the CKY Herreshoff Cat Ketches. I cite his work at his link below:

https://www.ericwsponberg.com/wp-content/uploads/state-of-the-art-on-free-standing-masts.pdf


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## Jeff_H (Feb 26, 2000)

One minor point, while it is true that standing rigging does need to be replaced over time, carbon fiber is a fatigue prone material, which when used in a mast designed to flex, (as these are) have a limited lifespan. Many of these older carbon fiber masts are well past their 'use-by" date, and are showing up with fatigue spider cracking in the higher stress areas. You literally can buy dozens of standing and running rigging replacements for the price of a single carbon fiber mast, if you can even find a company willing to build a replacement since much of the tooling no longer exists.

Jeff


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## Deric (Feb 3, 2008)

Jeff is correct regarding the cost of the free standing masts. A friend who had a Herreshoff Cat Ketch 33 spent 40k to have them replaced after they blew up from a lightening strike. That's $$$$$ just for masts. He had them custom made and taller than original specs.

I have noticed that masts on some Freedom cat ketch boats tended to have spider cracks along the seam of tape that wrapped on the outside under the finish paint. Don't know what caused it but perhaps stress and fatigue??

The masts designed by Eric Sponberg and built by John Newton for the Herreshoff Cat Ketch boats were combination of carbon fiber and S Glass, with the carbon sandwiched between the S Glass. 

How long these mast will hold up on my boat still is a test. They only need to be outlive me. Recently, I removed the paint off the mast in order to repaint. Exposing the glass does provide one an opportunity to inspect the condition to a degree.


Side note: always hoping those masts never get to know lightening. If they do, my sailboat may morph into a canal boat.


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## RichF28 (Jun 17, 2015)

I have the Freedom 28 sloop, and I love it. The build quality seems very good, and its a very simple boat to sail well. It has never had a single blister at least since 2012. Insurance has not been a problem, nobody has asked about the carbon fiber mast. Mast problems are a real possibility. But the way I look at it is, if its lasted 30 years and is still in good condition, it gives me confidence it will last a lot longer. We have a cat ketch in our marina that never leaves the dock. A cat ketch just isn't ideal for day sailing, they don't seem to point well. The cat ketch I am familiar with also has blisters. Lots of them. A cat ketch seems to be designed for long distance, but a 28 is kind of small for long distance. Like all sailboats its a trade off. Only you can decide. But have a good survey, chasing blisters gets expensive fast.


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