Rockport Marine, INC. Freedom Boats

Freedom Boats are built by a Texas Company called Marine Service. Marine Service is owned by veteran boat builder Forest Canion. To learn more about Freedom Boats USA, please read below.

Freedom Boats USA (Forest Canion):

Hello, my name is Forest Canion, owner of Marine Service. I opened "Marine Service" in 1984 as a fiberglass repair shop. In 1989, I built the Flatlander 21. The Flatlander 21 was a great success in running shallow, floating shallow, and getting up shallow. It would turn and handle well, but the boat had draw backs including rough riding and it was wet running. My second boat, the Flatlander 24 had a better ride but was still a wet riding boat. During my early years in boat building, I realized the way of building a boat by “lofting” or “off the wall” was very expensive in time and money, with no way to recover the cost of building and tooling for these boats easily.

In 2004, I met and started working with Mr. David Lemke. David has an extensive working background in Auto-CAD (Computer Aided Design) specifically for boat hull designs. David along with Auto-CAD has completely changed the way I think about boat building. I used to dream up a boat design and start physically building hull designs, after months of errors and starting over I would finally get the design right.

Through our conversations we agreed there had to be a more efficient way to design and produce fiberglass boats. Building a new design following the traditional way is expensive in labor and money, and it requiring a lot of sold boats to pay for the expense building of a new hull design. Simplicity and time saving in all stages of producing a hull had to become our most important factor.

Freedom 22 TCC

In 2008 we would put to test all of our ideas. I had always loved the way the Flatlander 21 and 24 handled. The things we needed to address were a rough, wet ride and recouping the money spent on designing and tooling cost. It was decided to build a plug out of fiberglass so it could be used in testing, for building the mold and be sellable. So by adding more bow rake, two inches of V to the hull, and a wide chine to help soften and dry up the ride. a design was created. First we generated a scaled computer drawing, made the cut files which was then used to cut all the pieces for a male mold and then assembled the mold. After building a fiberglass hull from this mold we were still faced with weeks of dealing with over lays and unruly lines. During the fairing process we discussed the possibility of building a female mold.

In the past to build a boat shape with flowing lines using a female mold was impossible because one could not see the lines and shape. Using twenty first century technologies the shape is designed and visualized on the computer with all measurements generated on the computer. A computer controlled router with a variance of .003 of an inch in twenty feet to cut the pieces was used with the ability to arrange pieces on four by eight sheets to conserve material and eliminate human measuring or cutting mistakes. This produces no material overlaps and straighter lines in fairing, all of these items lead to production savings.

Freedom Patriot 18 Cat

In late 2009, we started talking about a cat style boat. Again the basic concept was simplicity in manufacturing and maximum performance without breaking the bank. After doing several scale drawings, looking at rendered views and studying performance charts we decided on a design. It was to be a modified true compression inverted V style catamaran hull. This design limits the amount of air that enters the tunnel, gives lift to the total hull and generates floatation as the hull sinks into the water. By production start time several female boat molds had been produced for one off projects with great results. A female mold was the method of choice. David created several design variations of the basic design and after studying performance charts, flotation charts, and running production costs we picked a design. Once the computer work was finished and the cutting began we had a fiberglass hull ready to test in 14 days with fairing time going from weeks to days.

There are fuel efficient outboards available in the marketplace. Time has come for a fuel efficient boat hull. Come join us in the 21st Century.