June 2026  Beyond

By Dan Andersson

A Freedom 40 Under Junk Rig

My sailing background before Beyond was mainly with bermudan rigs.  Tight.  Taut.

Loaded.  Everything tied down and under tension. Highly strung efficiency.

A junk rig felt odd at first. Loose. Almost untidy.

The sails move on the mast.

They slide a little forward and aft. If they are not drawing properly, they can slat.

Coming from bermudan rigs, it was different.  But I now think that looseness is part of what de-dramatises the boat.

Beyond is a 1979 Freedom 40 Centre Cockpit cat-ketch, hull number 16.  She has the

big aft cabin, and at some earlier stage her original aluminium masts were replaced with carbon ones.  Very good carbon sticks.  Not a small thing on an old ocean boat.

I bought her from Mike Lyons, who many in the junk-rig world will know.

Beyond was everything Mike said she was. The bones were good.

But she had been sitting for a while.  Mike’s affectionate judgement was that her previous keeper had been “a better captain than a maintenance crew.”  Fair enough. It needed a bit of tidying up. But she was sound.

When I bought her, she already carried a junk rig, but in poor condition. So, I had a decision to make. Keep her junk-rigged, or move her back towards the original Freedom sail plan.  The junk rig won the argument. 

Not romantically. Practically.  The deciding issue was reefing.  I wanted to sail Beyond myself, and I wanted a rig I could manage alone without drama.  I liked the idea that I could shorten sail, almost, with a cup of coffee still in my hand.  The Junk Rig Association helped a great deal here.  When you are staring at an unusual rig and pretending to be calm, other people’s experience and willingness to share is gold.

For the new sails I commissioned Sebastian Hentschel at Segelmacherei Tuchwerkstatt in Greifswald, Germany. They did a very good job.  Beyond now carries two junk sails of about 450 square feet each, so roughly 900 square feet in total.  Enough sail to move her properly, but I can reduce it in small sensible increments, all the way down to two little handkerchiefs.

Crossing the Atlantic, every time I needed to drop a bit of sail, balance the boat, and stop her heeling over like a demented thing, I congratulated myself again for staying with junk.  This also fits my wider philosophy for Beyond. I have resisted adding complications wherever I could. 

The rig, the electronics, the lack of air conditioning and fancy systems — all of it is deliberate.  I am not against comfort.

But offshore, complexity becomes debt. Everything you add can fail.

Will fail. And everything that fails is dull when you are tired,

wet, alone, and a long way from help. “Keep it simple, stupid” sounds crude on land. In the middle of the Atlantic, it’s wisdom.

The centre cockpit is another part of her kindness. You sit near the middle of the boat’s motion, not right aft like someone standing on the end of a springboard while the stern kicks up and down. Forward of the cockpit she has the interior of a 32-foot boat.  Aft of it she has the owner’s cabin. Two proper living spaces. For passage-making and family use, that works.  The refit took nearly two years, with me based in the UK and flying in and out of Baltimore.  A labour of love, yes, but also a grind.  There is only so much romance in sanding, fairing, epoxy, paint, and discovering the next thing that needs doing.  We wrapped the topsides in a fresh coat of Flag Blue, Alexseal. 

I also slave-laboured my teenage boys onto the project, which is one of the privileges of fatherhood if you are shameless enough. The reward came later.  I sailed Beyond with my youngest son into New York, then up

the East River and on towards Long Island and Port Washington.

Under sail, the junk rig took the drama out of the boat.  Gybes that might once have been noisy, heart-in-mouth moments became graceful seamanship.  The sails came across without violence.  Easy to love the junk rig in those moments.

It is not a total honeymoon. I learned to watch chafe like a hawk. Lines move. The rig is dynamic rather than locked rigidly in place.  Chafe inspection became a discipline, and on my North Atlantic passage I learned that lesson properly.  Several times.  Beyond has now carried me from the Chesapeake to New York, to Bermuda, across

the Atlantic to Horta, and then on to the Canaries.  She is currently moored in Tazacorte, on La Palma.  

For now, the plan is to explore the Canaries for a season and then, if boat, weather, and courage all agree, set off again towards the end of the year — across the equator, through

the doldrums, down to Brazil, and perhaps Rio de Janeiro in time for Carnival next February.

She is not perfect. I am not either. But she has looked after me, and I have come to trust her.  For the longer, messier story — the refit, the passages, the mistakes, the boys, the fear, and the joy — I write about the journey at         

SV Beyond | Sailing Blog 

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