Freedom Mirage

 

Issue: October/November 2005

To compete with the excellent 5.5 to 6m bowriders being imported these days, local products must be good ? like the Freedom Mirage.

It competes strongly without losing its distinct Aussie fl avour. You?d pick it for a local from a fair way away ? and a goodlooking one at that.

It?s a boat suited to local boating conditions, as appearances suggest. For example, lots of the imports lack a convenient anchor locker. Which is fine when your boat spends all its time berthed alongside. But even in our highly developed boating locations like Pittwater, the Gold Coast and Noosaville (where our test was conducted), a big bowrider is liable to be tied to a canal-side pontoon much of the time, so once away from home you ?do? need to anchor here.

Freedom?s Glen Grams tells us this feature helps sell a lot of boats for him, but he isn?t afraid to admit the (inarguable) excellence of competing imports. But he says people with enough ?boating nous? to see through a veneer of glam to practical considerations in their boating backyards are spending their money at home. You can?t argue with the parochial pride Glen wears so happily ? it?s a valid point. As is his praise for competing locals such as the Cruise Craft bowriders. He puts it well when he says the best thing about these Aussie products is that they give nothing away to the imports!

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So what, besides a decent-sized anchor well, does Freedom?s mirage off er? Bowriders these days follow a fairly set menu (simply because it works) and the Mirage doesn?t detour much.

LAYOUT
It has ample storage space under both bow and aft lounges, with a lengthy ski locker underfloor in the cockpit.

Another capacious storage locker is found in the windscreen bulkhead and, as you?d expect, there?s a pocket along each side of the cockpit.

Aussie practicality shows through in neat netting retainers to keep loose gear in place, and in a moulded liner for another storage locker beneath the centre of the aft lounge cushion. The ?drinks locker? in front of the passenger seat is huge, unlike some imports, which usually present as a tiny glove box. It drains overboard of course, the better to empty melted ice at the end of a day on the water. It?s also of sufficient size to guard against that terror of all Aussie boaties ? dehydration!

The bowrail is low and unobtrusive, although it is there. It is yet another practical consideration evident only when the lady of the house is trying to control the boat at some of the excuses for ramps we suffer in this country. As we?ve all learned, there?s nothing worse than a boat that has a smooth gel coat with nowhere to hang onto it securely.

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