Welcome aboard Nine of Cups

We bought Nine of Cups in 2000 from her original owner in Kemah, Texas. We had been looking for a "home" for nearly a year and had visited Annapolis, Newport, Seattle, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami ... the list goes on, but all to no avail. We had never seen a Liberty before ... there weren't very many made ... and we were visiting Kemah to look at another boat when the broker suggested we take a look at this one. It was love at first sight! She was the right size, within our budget, and a perfect layout for two people...and a cat! We like to think that Nine of Cups found us, not vice versa.

We made an offer, had her surveyed and closed the deal in late February. We visited and brought some gear in March, retired from our jobs and moved aboard in April and sailed away across the Gulf of Mexico and into the sunset in May. We've been living aboard and sailing ever since and now it's time to part with her. We're hoping she'll find a new, loving family who'll take her on more adventures. She's sea-proven and crew ready for coast hopping along the US shore, crossing to the Bahamas or the Caribbean and beyond ... all those exotic ports around the world you've read and dreamed about are out there just waiting for you.

You can check our her highlights and specifications here.

Here are the floor and deck plans of a standard Liberty 458. There were several options available and Nine of Cups' floor plan differs slightly in that there is also access via the galley  to the aft cabin which means no shower in the main stateroom, but a larger, more open galley. The forward cabin features a Pullman double berth and a single berth to starboard with a hanging locker, a desk/work area and several roomy storage lockers to port.

Come down below

Relax, dine and entertain in a well-appointed saloon

The main saloon, starboard, features a solid teak dining table which seats 4-6, bookshelves, stowage lockers with additional stowage behind and below the settees. A battery bank, refrigeration electronics and the watermaker are also located beneath the starboard settee.  To port, the saloon has a settee with bookshelves, a liquor cabinet and stowage behind and beneath.  Both settees double as sea berths used with lee cloths when we're under way. Settee cushions were reupholstered in 2015.

For larger views, just click on the thumbnails below and use the arrows to scroll through all the photos below.

The Nav Station

The nav station is to port, aft of the saloon and features an opening chart table/desk, bookshelves and most of the electronic gear outlined in Nine of Cups' highlights. 

Master Stateroom

The master stateroom is aft. It's comfy and roomy with a custom queen-sized bed, two night tables with storage and reading lamps, a large hanging locker, a sink, a vanity and lots of drawers and stowage space. A swivel chair can be used for the vanity or removed from its bracket and used as extra seating at the saloon table. There's also a head adjoining this cabin, but other than when guests are aboard, we rarely use it in favor of the forward head which is larger. Instead we use the aft head as a wet locker. 

The Galley

The galley is convenient and great for cooking underway as well as in port. We have refrigeration with a separate freezer compartment (Adler-Barbour cold plate).  A brand new 3-burner propane stove/oven was installed in 2017.  There's plenty of room for plates, pots/pans, utensils, and condiments. Handy amenities include a built-in knife rack, a spice rack and even a pull-out cutting board. A separate locker keeps the microwave handy, but securely stowed during passages.

Forward Stateroom

Forward of the saloon is another stateroom to starboard with a double Pullman berth above and a single berth below. This forward stateroom also includes a desk-office setup to port with a swivel chair. Truth be told, except when we had guests aboard, we primarily used this area for additional stowage (as you can see), on long, trans-oceanic passages. Forward of this stateroom is another full head with shower.

The Engine and Engine Access

The engine is a Ford Lehman 90 HP. It was replaced with a re-manufactured Lehman 90 in NZ in 2010 at which time we also repainted the engine room and replaced the motor mounts. The replacement engine has approximately 2000 hours on it. Access to the engine is convenient through four removable lockers door: two to starboard opposite the galley and two to port, one opposite the nav station and one opposite the aft head.

A few other bits and pieces ...

We recently replated the Chelsea solid brass ship's clock with matching barometer and they're gleaming!

Want to know how Nine of Cups got her name? You've come to right place ... Click here!

A little history of the Liberty 458

Who designed the Liberty 458? Hmm...we were told when we bought the boat that it was a Robert Perry design and never questioned it. In 2011 in Dunedin, NZ, we met and became friends with Richard O'Neill-Dean who was keen on the design and layout of our Liberty 458 ... so much so that he took the time to research its designer. From Richard's research:

"One of the interesting things I did discover is that there's quite a lot of confusion and contradictory information around the designer of the 458's. It looks as though the design is the happy outcome of a number of great minds building and modifying  an original starting point. I know you said, David, that the designer was Robert Perry but so far, in my admittedly not very scholarly research, he is not the strongest contender. Just to add to the debate I will put in my findings to date:

From the Liberty Yachts Website: “To tell the history of the Liberty-yachts, it is a hard thing to do. We would like to do this with the words of the man, who had the idea to build these beautiful boats - Peter Hoyt."  My precis of this story from the Liberty Yachts website and other web sources:  Peter Hoyt became acquainted with Jack Kelly of San Diego, who decided to develop and produce the Peterson 44 and had Shin Fa build the molds for the Peterson 44. Jack then started selling a ton of the Peterson 44's, and there was no way Shin Fa could keep up with his production demands. There was a legal contest and the original Peterson 44 moulds at Shin Fa were ordered by a judge to be destroyed. Jack moved the design to a new factory and built new moulds for the Peterson 44. Peter and Jo Hoyt had shipped a Formosa 47 to Seattle while they were waiting the completion of the first of the line of the Perry-designed Passport sailboats. People fell in love with the Formosa 47.... which was literally a piece of junk, a warranty nightmare, but it looked pretty and, as mentioned, the layout was dynamite!

They then decided to go back to Taiwan and try to incorporate their greatly modified version of the Formosa 47 interior into a new boat to be built at a different and a much higher quality boat yard. Peter re-approached Shin Fa to see if they would be willing to build a production boat for him based on the Peterson-designed Formosa 47and found they had built a new mould, an extended version of the Peterson 44 for a group of Germans who were importing them as charter boats since Shin Fa still had the original lines and offsets. It was this "German charter boat" mould (re-designed by Jörg von Rehden* of Germany) that Shin Fa wanted to utilize for what became the Liberty 458. Peter designed a new deck-mould and let them "have a go at it"! To this day, Peter still can't believe that they compressed the Formosa 47' /46 interior in a much narrower-beamed 458, but they
did it and they did it well. 
Other web-site information, most of it contradictory:

• Liberty 458 / Delta 46 is a centre cockpit cutter-rigged sailing vessel designed by Jörg von Rehden* (Germany) in the late 1970’s and Peter Hoyt (USA) in the early 1980’s. The yachts were built at the Shin Fa yard in Taiwan.

• The Liberty 458 was designed by the legendary Doug Peterson

• Designer: Peter Hoyt/Doug Peterson

• Model: 458 - Designer: Peter Hoyt

• The hull is the same mould as the Kelly-Peterson 44.