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Garry Hoyt was a breath of fresh air for the sailing industry when he launched Freedom Yachts in 1976. He'd been a Sunfish World Champ and a Finn Olympian and was inspired in part by his young son Jeff's hot, new, simple, wishbone boom rig Windsurfer, which was nothing but fun. Gary had turned for help to a yacht designer with one of the oldest and most revered names in U.S. yachting. Hoyt wanted to make sailing simple and more accessible to those who had not been born to boats. Halsey Herrshoff was then and is world class sailor and yacht designer. Halsey has long been a credit to his family lineage of great yacht design and the very highest levels of competitive sailing.

Combining an unstayed cat rig with modern fiberglass materials and construction technology, their collaboration was the quirky but popular Freedom 40, a cat ketch. Although the 40 was designed for easy handling, its lively performance was a bonus and the prototype won the cruising class in the 1977 Rolex Cup in the Virgin Islands and others performed very well in various Bermuda and other races.

The hull form was not designed or intended to go upwind well but off the wind and reaching . . . LOOK OUT !

The brochure for the Freedom 40 remains one of the best written "product handouts" of all time.

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