FREEMAN 30 Classic Cruiser

Kevayling is a Freeman Classic 30 diesel motor cruiser built by John Freeman in 1968. She is powered by two Bedford TK330 6 cylinder 5.5 litre diesel engines producing 100 hp on each engine.

John Freeman design the Freeman 30 to be used inshore or on the river as a comfortable 4/6 berth powerful cruiser. She has a cruising speed of 7 knots and a top speed of 13 knots. With economic diesel engines she will burn approx. 0.75 gallon of diesel each hour, each engine. This will increase to 1.5 gallon per hours for each engine at higher speeds.

One of the most popular Freeman's, a genuine classic, all fibre glass hull and mahogany interior woodwork with an aft cabin and powerful twin engines. A versatile boat for river, estuary and sea use with good sea handling.

This is a factory specification from the original boat brochures. It must be noted that each boat was individually made, sometimes to owners particular specifications and the manufacturing process developed accordingly.  


Kevayling's Helm

A New Name

Many people have asked where the name came from and I usually respond by saying it’s Celtic for fisherman. In fact Kevayling is made up from my brother-in-law’s name who sadly died just after we brought her. His name was Kevin Ayling, commonly known as Kev. He was in fact a closet sailor himself regularly taking his family to the boards for their holidays and was a keen fisherman. In memory of Kev we simply removed the space in his name to make a new Celtic word which Kevayling carries with pride.

 
Kevayling moored at Chatham Marina 2019.

History

We purchased Kevayling in October 2007 when we decided that our former boat Misty Blue had become to small for our requirements, or should I say the requirements of our grandchildren who appeared to be growing at an alarming rate.

Her former name, when we purchased her, was Louisa D. This was in fact the name of the former owners wife. Right from the onset we had decided that she should have a name change and a brush up on her paint work, although in very good condition generally the paint work was tired after 40 years of polishing. We were not going to rush the work and decided that we would use her as she stood for the first year and lift her out and undertake the work during the winter of 2008/09.    

After a fun year Kevayling was duly lifted and work began on the tidying up but we soon realised that the windows were leaking worse than we thought and the only thing was to remove them all and re-seat them with new seals. This would mean putting her in the boat shed so that the work could be carried out before spring arrived. So what started out as a tidy up became a full blown restore job, off came the old paint, deck fittings and windows and work commenced.

The Log Book

This on-line log book was an idea that I developed over several years originating from our first hand written log book recording our adventures and trips on our first boat. With a background of IT development, gained through by  work before retirement, I have managed to automate and present our adventures and trips directly to the web. With the development of dedicated mobile apps for boating it has become relatively easy to record and publish our trips as we do them, it's a case of collecting the data from these apps and linking them to this site, along with other bits of information about our boat and us.