Early Freeman 30

Hi Shipmates
This is my Freeman 30 mark 1 before the rebuild in 1993, in my eye she looks original and how she would have come direct from Freemans, her name at that time (1993) was Cornbole, I understand from what I have read that the first of the Freeman 30's were mostly built with a rear cabin, this one as you can see had a separate enclosed helm position behind which was a small an open cockpit. It appears to be made on vertical tongue and groved mahogany timber, I cannot seem to find out any more information than what this picture shows as Sheridan Marine have no records of these early boats and I know it's going back in time but I was a teenager when she was built so somebody must still be around with this knowledge or maybe pictures of her! It would be great if I havnt managed to attach this picture it is in My Freeman Gallery. I look forward to hearing your comments.

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Sorry not clever enough to post a picture to this forum please look in My Picture Gallery.

Thanks Admin for attaching the picture, I do also now have a video on disk of her as she came out of the water and before and after refitting including original interior shots and after refit sea trials, is there any way of showing these on your forum.

You could try uploading it to You Tube or a hosting site like photobucket and linking it from there

Do you know how big the file is?

Hi Pat
No I don't it's about 17 mins in total, as you can tell I'm not so hot with computers. I'll ask a couple of mates to see if they can help me. Thanks for the advise.

If you put the disc in your PC, then open a windows explorer you should be able to see the files on the disc (usually under D: ) the file size should be listed

Well shipmates this was the moment I had been waiting for, after three years of hard work Rainbow II was able to stretch her legs for the first time, the engines performed perfectly with great power and an awesome sound. 
Hope you enjoy this video as much as I enjoyed the day out.
Happy sailing.
Ps. If I have not got this download right please let me know.


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Wow, that's getting a move on, downloads working fine. Makes my plodding 23 at 5 knotts up the river look pathetic

I'll only be doing 5 knots most of the time it's just so nice to take it slow and let the world drift by. I needed to change the engines and as she is going down to the coast at Littlehampton I thought the extra power would be useful plus I do like a little jolly now and agin but fuel costs are an issue when opening the throttle. 
Just realised I've posted this on the wrong forum if it can be changed to Freeman Chat or My Freeman I would be obliged. Never very good at this. Thanks.

For a minute I thought you were selling her after all the hard work Jim  Sounds great though

Looking great!!!  I love seeing Morse controls flat to the dash!!!
What sort of speed were you making there?  I guess about 17-20 knots??

I didn't post the speed deliberately to see what you all thought it might be suffice to say when deciding on propellers I have over propped using 15/15's and am unable to achieve full rev's thus not achieving full HP although at 1800 rpm which they did achieve I believe is around full torque for these engines, I believe the reason I got the calculation wrong was I didn't have the true weight of Rainbow II before lifting her back in the water and instead of the 5.5 ton I thought she weighed she actually weighed in at 8.5 ton ouch! Which either way you look at it whether you say pushing an extra 3 ton of water out the way or lifting an extra 3 ton of boat out of the water I got it wrong. The good news is the fuel consumption isn't as bad as I was afraid of and I do have the capacity to cruise for I'm estimating again oops 48 hours, we did a straight 16 hours pushing the boat a lot of the time and only used half my total fuel load so shouldn't be too far out. Now as for the speed I'm still not sure of the true speed as the log as you can see on the video was only showing 10.5 knots and the faster I went the more discrepency between this and the sat nav, not knowing the speed of the tide which I no doubt should have checked by just stopping which on the day I just didn't think of doing I still don't know, my personal opinion is we did not plane because I misscalculated the weight so we were not at planning speed as we could not use the other 700 rpm and achieve full HP and top speed which had we been 3 tons lighter I think we may have done but it would have been close. Going on a diet now. One thing I do know is I am well pleased with her performance, I can do 6 knots with one engine at 1200 rpm which if I did so will increase my cruising range even more. The engines performed as if they could keep going day and night at full throttle, they were throbbing away without vibration all day it was as if Rainbow II had a heart beat of her own. I am totally over the moon with her.