Freeman 22 Mk2

A comfortable little motor cruiser with an interesting engine

- CLIVE MARSH

Motor boats have never really appealed to me, simply because I can't fix them M when they go wrong, which inevitably they will. The idea of being stuck out at sea with my head down an engine compartment in a rolling boat has never appealed.

But Brenda, my wife, prefers a motor cruiser with plenty of headroom and all the facilities. So, one day when visiting Mike Roud's boat yard at Rye I bought an old 22ft Freeman Mk2. I never intended to take it to sea.

Named White Dove, she had spent most of her life since 1968 on the Medway. Now, 50 years later, she had somehow found her way to Rye and required some TLC.

With no cockpit cover, the original Ford WaterMota engine and electrics sat in a puddle of rusty water and I thought that making this lot work would be beyond my skills. But Brenda liked the boat and we set about making her seaworthy-ish.

We needed a hood and found a wedding dressmaker called Sylvia in Rye who had a sideline making boat covers and canopies. She made us a fantastic, complex structure, that kept the boat bone dry.

Next was that rusting lump of an engine. Beyond me, Mike completely re-wired the boat and found that the engine worked fine. But Mike is an engineer and he only has to look at an engine and it works. A bit like the chief engineers when I was at sea.

Learning the basics

However, my budget did not run to engaging a full-time engineer and so I'd have to learn some basics at least. Strangely I was looking forward to this.

A few days before Christmas the planets aligned for us to take White Dove up the river. A good tide, time, and favourable weather.