The 2015 Season...

New laminate (opening) windows, new packing for the shafts and anti-fouled... nearly ready to float.

Railings

Mutual Admiration has wooden railings all around the deck. They have had no treatment since I bought the boat, except for a necessary fix to one of the rear railings...

There are two stanchions at the back of the boat that were meeting the deck on the curve. They had plywood feet, to match the shape, but had rotten through. This allowed the stanchion to move, the rail to move, and led to damage at the corners where the rails met.

 First thing was to build a new stanchion base in glass:

Once that was complete, I removed all the railings. They were sanded back using various sandpaper weights, finishing with 600 grit. It turns out that they are Mahogany... I decided to try Deks Oilje, soaking them with Deks Oilje 1, then finishing with 6 coats of Deks Oilje 2 (sanding between coats 5 & 6). Here are the before, during and after shots:

Came across another Freeman the other day, that I remember from my youth! 'Mary Frances' was owned by the Hendersons and was a flyer...

I must try and find out more information on her - what size were the engines? What is her top speed? I think she is a Freeman 30, but not sure...

Cockpit

I'm planning the restoration of the cockpit. Pictures to follow... I removed the new plastic headlining, and discovered that the two vinyl sunroofs look to be in reasonable condition - one could even be opened! The boat at the moment only has one seat - the helm. And it is not original. The original setup looks something like this (taken from the original brochure - Freeman 33 Sales Brochure ):

I'm trying to source originals, but it is proving difficult...

Freeman 33 Davits

Here are my Davits:

I had to remove them, as detailed in another post, because there was osmosis behind each foot. I am now trying to fix them - as you can see the one on the right must have met a wall. Need to find a pulley from somewhere!

Launch...

Finally got the boat back in for the 2011 season...

Up on the rather nifty trailer. Only fault with it is that the pads can't be widened. As it is, the pads match the shaft spacing perfectly!

And she floats! Here she is after a good power hosing. Need to compound the topsides now...

Compounding the hull

I had bought this stuff months earlier, as I had seen good reports:

http://shurhold.com/buff-magic

And, in order to apply it properly, I bought one of the Silverline Polishers off ebay:

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_nkw=silverline+polisher

I applied the compound with a brush, putting it on sparingly (as the instructions suggest), and then polished it away. I'm very impressed with the results:

This is the before and after shot. Quite a difference...