Adrian Mulville had one purpose in mind when he was looking for a boat in 2007. He wanted a vessel he could take his family on a year’s sabbatical, sailing across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and back. The boat would have to satisfy that ultimate test for any sailor: to keep his or her family safe and happy while sailing across an ocean. The stakes could hardly have been higher.

By then, he had half a lifetime’s experience on boats, starting on the old gaffers his father – legendary author Frank Mulville – took him sailing on as a child, including sailing across the Atlantic to Cuba aged nine on the converted Cornish lugger Girl Stella. He even survived being shipwrecked off the Azores at the end of that voyage (as described in his father’s book In Granma’s Wake).

As an adult, he led a charmed life, doing yacht deliveries for Oyster Yachts and other boatbuilders in the winter, and skippering Thames barges in the summer. By the time he and his wife Jill decided to embark on their own transatlantic adventure, Adrian had sailed across the Atlantic more than 20 times.

An exceptional seafarer

As a result he had an almost unparalleled knowledge of traditional craft as well as modern yachts, not to mention navigation techniques. One of his earliest deliveries was sailing a brand new Bénéteau from France to Tahiti, without any modern navigation equipment (GPS hadn’t even been invented yet), using just a sextant, a compass and his trusty Casio watch. The next moment, he was skippering a 100-tonne lump of steel to victory in the Thames barge races on the East Coast of England.

As he says, ‘My motto in those days was: if my fingernails get too clean, it’s time to go barging; if my fingernails get too dirty, it’s time to go yachting.’

Yet, despite this extraordinary seafaring life, he had only ever owned one boat: a West Solent One Design (a 35ft wooden racing boat) called Halloween which he bought in 1986 and then spent 15 years rebuilding, followed by 15 years racing. He loved that boat, but it was clearly not suited to sailing across the Atlantic.

Although he was on a limited budget, there were any number of good, solid production boats he could have bought for such a voyage – such as a Rustler, a Rival or a Southerly – but somehow he didn’t feel anything for what he calls those ‘bland white plastic boats’.

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After months of searching, Jill eventually spotted a Freedom 40 for sale in Birdham Pool in Chichester. Adrian took one look and said: ‘She looks wacky, and I don’t do wacky. It’s some kind of hippy boat.’ But he agreed to have a look, as he was passing through Chichester anyway. ‘I saw her and thought, “Hmm, she’s got really pretty lines. I don’t know about the rig, but it’s certainly worth investigating.”’

So he went home, read about the Freedom concept, and went back a few weeks later with the whole family to have a second look.

‘They loved her,’ he recalls. ‘The layout was exactly what we were looking for, with separate cabins for us and the kids – I grew up in the fo’c’sle and thought they should too – and a nice bit of space in between for everyone. She has a really sweet underwater shape, not unlike a working boat or a smack even. She’s got slack bilges, a centreplate, with a bit of flare in the bow. She looked like a good sea boat and a dry boat, so that ticked all those boxes.

‘I liked the combination of sturdy fibreglass hull, carbon-fibre masts and wooden wishbones. It was eccentric, it was different, and it had character. The rig was a leap in the dark. But it looked like it was all held together with bits of string, and I had a lot of string in those days, because I was working for Oyster so I had all their offcuts.’

You got to be free

The Freedom 40 was created in 1975 by advertising executive Garry Hoyt. A passionate sailor, Hoyt competed in three Olympic Games (under the Puerto Rican flag), once in the Finn class and twice in the Tempest class. According to an early promotion booklet, he came up with the idea for the Freedom range while sailing on a new yacht in the Caribbean.

Despite having all the latest gizmos, their fancy yacht struggled to overtake a traditional Tortola sloop laden with ‘cement bags, vegetables, children, and several goats’. When the electrics on their boat failed, he had to go ashore and beg some water from the crew of the other boat. As Hoyt tells the story, the local skipper then said: ‘Mon, those conveniences got you all tied up. On the sea you got to be free.’

The experience (or something like it) convinced him that yacht design had gone badly wrong and become increasingly complex for no real benefit. He approached Halsey Herreshoff (grandson of legendary yacht design Nathanael Herreshoff) to design a boat which would ‘push new material into new simplicity’. What they came up with was essentially a traditional long-keel hull shape, with a spoon bow, a wineglass transom and a centreboard.

But it was the rig that pushed new boundaries. Their cat-ketch rig featured twin, wraparound sails on unstayed aluminium masts and wishbone booms, like a windsurfer, with the front mast set far forward and no jib or genoa. The wraparound sails gave a clean trailing edge, maximising the area of the sail.

The unstayed masts reduced the clutter and structural stresses of standing rigging, while allowing the mast to bend as the wind got stronger, spilling the wind from the top of the sail where it was least wanted. To those who questioned whether an unstayed aluminium mast would be strong enough, he pointed out that if an aircraft can support a 100ft unstayed wing travelling at 700mph, then an unstayed mast will be plenty strong enough.

High claims

The original Freedom 40 was built with a large centre cockpit with an enormous aft cabin because ‘Old Number One needs special space to gather his thoughts, ravish fair maidens, and otherwise fortify himself
for the stress of leadership.’ (Hoyt could spin a yarn any way he pleased – not for nothing was a he a successful copywriter.)

It also had a dark green hull (‘the proper colour for a proper yacht’), brown sails (easier on the eye than white sails) and no engine (‘a Freudian obsession, a petroleum bobo’ – ‘bobo’ presumably standing for ‘burnt-out but opulent’). Instead of an engine, he suggested carrying 16ft oars to manoeuvre in and out of harbour.

Hoyt made high claims for his and Herreshoff’s creation, suggesting it had ‘unusual speed and sensitivity to windward’ and that ‘she will beat any cruising boat her size, and lots of racing boats as well’. The marketing bumf was accompanied by a challenge: Hoyt wagered $1,000 that the Freedom 40 would ‘beat any similar sized cruising monohull in single handed competition around a representative course’.

It turned out he wasn’t lying, and the prototype Freedom 40 beat all comers in its class when it turned up to Antigua Week in 1976. It helped that the boat was stripped back and helmed by a former Olympic sailor (Hoyt himself). The boat’s performance was less impressive once laden with an engine and the other modern conveniences Hoyt had eschewed but which the buying public seemed to require, though it still performed tolerably well, especially off the wind.

It took a while even for a charmer such as Hoyt to persuade the notoriously conservative sailing public to embrace the freedom of an unstayed rig, but the concept did eventually take off. The advent of carbon- fibre masts was a natural and beneficial development – producing a weight saving of 30% while making the masts stiffer – and eventually many boats switched to conventional sails, with regular booms and sail tracks in place of wishbones and sleeves. Around 90 Freedom 40s were built, mostly by Tillotson Pearson in Rhode Island and a few by Freedom Yachts in the UK.

The Freedom 40 was followed by a 33ft version designed by Jay Paris in 1979 (marketed as the Freedom 35 in the UK), and the Freedom 44, which boasted a more modern underwater shape, including fin keel and skeg rudder. Both the 40 and the 33 were available in a variety of hull configurations, including the original centreboard type, a shallow-draught version with a ‘stub’ fin keel and slightly smaller rig, and a fin keel version with tall rig.

For full disclosure, I should say that I own a Freedom 33, which my wife and I bought in 2020 and subsequently sailed down the French canals to Greece, where she has been based ever since. She has served us well both as a family boat, for relaxed cruising with our two children, as well as embarking on more adventurous trips.

Whistling maid

When Adrian bought Whistling Maid in 2007, the teak deck had come to the end of its life and he was able to negotiate a good price, as most people were put off by the work needed to fix it. Even then, it was still a gamble as he didn’t know what he’d find once he took the teak off.

It paid off, however; after sailing the boat to the East Coast and tucking her up in a shed, he ripped all the teak off and resheathed it with fibreglass. In the process, all the deck fittings were removed, refurbished and rebedded. He then removed all essential items, such as the masts and the centreboard, to check that everything was solid for the trip ahead.

Adrian, Jill and family set off from Maldon in September 2009. They sailed down the English Channel to Dartmouth, then to Spain, Portugal, Madeira and the Canaries, making a three-week Atlantic crossing to arrive in Tobago on 24 January.

Over the next few months, they worked their way up the Caribbean – including stopping off in Antigua for the Antigua Classics and photographer/friend Den Phillips’s wedding – eventually setting off for Bermuda on 1 June, and onwards to the Azores. They rocked up at the Douarnenez Maritime Festival in July 2010, registered as a Herreshoff schooner – which seemed fair enough given the boat was designed by Halsey Herreshoff and the two sails are exactly the same size! They arrived back in Maldon exactly a year later.

‘The worst passage of the whole trip was the first day sailing across the Thames estuary; the second worst day of whole trip was the last day, sailing across the Thames estuary,’ says Adrian. ‘For the kids, it was the best thing that ever happened to them.’

The trip gave Adrian a close insight into the boat’s performance in all manner of challenging conditions.

‘It’s different from any other boat I’ve sailed,’ he says. ‘This boat is more comfortable in a seaway, not as quick. Downwind, it’s great. A lot of modern yachts are difficult to sail effectively downwind, partly because they’re too fast and overtake the wind more quickly. This boat is steadier. The magic of the rig is that, when you’re goose-winging, you can put the fore sail on the ‘wrong’ side and sail by the lee to a huge degree, so you have no fear of gybing on an Atlantic crossing.’

Back home, Adrian was eventually persuaded to sell Halloween and spend the money doing the things they should probably have done before the transatlantic voyage, such as buying a new set of sails, and fitting new water tanks and a new engine.

I joined him and Jill on board Whistling Maid when they were passing through Dartmouth last summer – supposedly on their way to the Helford, though contrary winds meant they only got as far as Salcombe.

It was exhilarating to be on a much bigger version of my boat – so much more solid and substantial – not to mention spacious. Under sail, however, I recognised many of the characteristics of my own boat, with exceptional performance off the wind but not so good to windward.

The big difference between my boat and Adrian’s is the rig. Whereas he has the original wraparound sails with wishbone booms, we have conventional booms and sail tracks. I looked on with trepidation as he hoisted the sails using the electric winch located in the cockpit – an essential piece of kit if you have sleeve sails, it seems to me.

That part was trouble-free, though I wasn’t around to see the sails being lowered, which I’ve read can be problematic due to friction. And Adrian has yet to work out a satisfactory reefing arrangement, as he’s reluctant to add extra cordage which might interfere with hoisting and lowering the sails. That bit’s a work in progress – even after 15 years!

Freedom 40 specifications

DESIGNER: Haalsey Herreshoff
YEARS BUILT: 1975-
LOA: 40ft / 12.19m
LWL: 35ft / 10.67m
BEAM: 12ft / 3.66m
DRAUGHT: 4ft 3in / 1.3m
DISPLACEMENT: 20,000lbs / 9,072kg
BALLAST: 5,530lbs / 2,508kg
SAIL AREA: 760 sq ft / 70.61m2
PRICE: £45,000-100,000

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