Rigging:

When I got my Freedom 25 it had cable lazy jacks, and cable back stays. But their was also a lot of missing hardware and damaged parts. From asking around and surfing the internet their seamed to be a number of different ideas and info on how peoples boats were set up. below are a few pics and info I learned from the past season on the water.

RIGGING Attachments to top of mast:

Here is a pic of the top of my winged mast, this stainless cap is a standard Freedom part. The stainless cap has a location for sheeve for main halyard with cotter pin, and a tab on frt for a shackle and block for Kite/Staysail halyard.

*note: this pic shows it fully assembled. The small blk nub is for wind instrument attachment.

In this picture you can see the frt tap with shackle and block for Kite/Staysail halyard.

*note: I used a wide enough shackle to locate the back stays on the shackle pin. With the rotating mast it's important to locate back stays on frt of mast so the tension will not keep the mast from rotating.

This pic shows the Main Halyard and sheeve, this pic shows how I attached the lazy jack cables to the sheeve cotter pin using washers and a longer pin.

BACK STAYS:

The standard back stay design for the Freedom 25 with rotating winged mast was a cable which attached to the top of mast and then turned to rope at the bottom which would be fed through a block attached to the stantion then around a winch. When I got my boat both rope section were cut and missing. This pic shows the new rope attached to the cable, redone to factory spec which is way over built.

*note: I plan to update this system in near future removing all the cables and running high grade low stretch line.

F25 mast upper bearing damage:

during the season the mast never rotated properly, and got some times would be very hard to rotate. I did a full upper and lower bearing service last winter, but this is what I found when I pulled the rig this fall

as you can see the sleeve which stays in the boat and hold the upper bearing and keeps water out of the cabin got wedged on the mast and needed to be cut out of boat in order to pull the mast.

*note: look to see how the mast is wedged to the left side of the tube, the upper bearing shifted causing it to get wedged

this is the upper mast bearing, as you can see it got pulled out of it's slot in the tube and from the pic below it forced the stainless bearing on the mast to be moved as well.

*note: my guess is that during the mast install the alignment got off and the to parts of the upper bearing where not true and over time they worked each other in to a pickle... luckly their is not real damage and can be easily fixed this winter.

you can see how the stainless ring on the mast which is the inner part of the bearing assembly was forced up and off its perch, which was part of the problem.

winter blues

missing my Freedom 25, with the tarp on the boat i can do nothing but dream about sailing this summer and all the trips I want to do. I plan to put Gonzo my boat into the shed in april or may to prep for the spring launch and hope to complete a few new projects I'm been working on this past year. I also was wondering if any local freedom owners in New England would like to have a winter gtging.

cheers,

yarrow