September 2026  Minnow

By Sally Peake

Minnow is a 21ft Freedom built in the UK in the 1980s. We acquired her in 2019 for a modest sum as she had languished in a marina for several years with berthing fees owing. Steve was familiar with Gary Hoyt designed boats (we previously owned both a Freedom 25 and a 28) and knew that fundamentally the mouldings were sound and the unstayed aluminium mast was a good one as it had been made by Needlespar (David Hunt was a structural engineer and an ex-Olympic sailor and the iconic five olympic rings were the mark of one of his spars). Of course, the mast position was also perfect for a junk rig.    

However, the lifting keels were rusted in the down position and in need of replacement, so this and rigging her as a junk were the two main areas of improvement. Quite frankly, the lifting keels arrangement was never an engineering success and so it was decided to replace them, fixed as bilge keels. This was duly done by Richardsons (our local boatyard) here on the Isle of Wight.

Turning our attention to the junk sail, we contacted David Tyler to discuss its design and he very kindly offered to provide a sail plan based upon a scaled down version of the sail he used on his Hunter Duette. The Freedom rig sail area was about 20 square metres, so it was decided to make the junk sail the same (no doubt Arne Kverneland would have made it bigger on the basis that one can always reef down....sorry Arne).

So, armed with David’s drawing we contacted Sebastien of Tuchwerkstatt.de and he provided a quotation which we accepted. We had previously met Sebastien at a JRA rally in Stavanger, Norway and at that time he was sailing Peregrine, his restored Loch Fyne boat complete with a massive white cambered single junk sail.  Needless to say, we were greatly impressed both with his boat building and junk sail making skills.  

After a few weeks we received a large parcel from Germany containing one Weathermax 80 cambered sail. It was exactly as David had designed and it was evident that Sebastien had fully used his cambered sail making knowledge for our benefit.

Work then commenced on making seven 3 metre long x 25mm diameter carbon fibre battens (David Tyler had used carbon fibre ones) along with installing all the running rigging necessary for a junk rigged boat albeit we followed David’s advice to reduce lines to the bare minimum (halyard, yard and throat parrels, fixed batten parrels, a pair of lazy jacks and an Arne inspired sheeting arrangement.

The now junk rigged Freedom 21 was re-named Minnow, and sailed really well (for a bilge keeler).  However, Steve was keen to experiment and after reading about ‘jiblets’ in a JRA magazine article, a set was made using an old lightweight spinnaker.  Battens were lengthened ahead of the mast and the jiblets attached thus giving a kind of retro-fit split sail. Certainly, Minnow’s windward ability has been improved, but possibly a slightly heavier sail cloth might be better as the light weight spinnaker material tends to flutter too much.

For a small boat, she has four good berths though little headroom. Sailing two up with a small dog, we tend to use the spare berths for bulky storage i.e. our inflatable kayak and paddles. To date, we have resisted too much electronics but the installation of a flexible solar panel on the coach roof has enabled us to keep the battery trickle-charged and this is usually sufficient for navigation lights, an echo sounder, phone charging and careful use of interior lights. There is an outboard motor on a bracket which can be raised when not in use to reduce drag. We rarely sail overnight largely due to our canine companion needing time ashore but, from our base on the Isle of Wight we regularly cruise an area between Chichester in the east and Brixham to the south-west.

Our "Boat of the Month" Archive is here, and the forum discussion for comments and candidate suggestions is here