Distant Drummer in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii

Distant Drummer is a Liberty 458 built at the Shin Fah yard in 1984. Some mystery surrounds the provenance of the hull of the boat and the question of who designed it is open to interpretation but the story we like goes something like this:

Original drawing of the Liberty 458 design

The Kelly Petersen 44 was an enormously successful yacht built at the Shin Fa yard in the early eighties. After some dispute between Jack Kelly and the yard the mould for the KP44 hull was ordered to be destroyed. Sometime later the mould was resurrected and the design extended by a German company. The new 46’ hull went in to production for the German charter boat market.

The original floor plan – DD has been modified quite a bit

In the meantime another couple of designers Peter and Jo Hoyt had bought a Formosa 47, also built in Taiwan, and had taken it to Seattle. Although it was it was badly constructed it was a great design and everybody loved it. Peter and Jo redesigned the interior of the Formosa 47 and went back to the Shin Fa yard to see if they had a design that it would fit.

Distant Drummer with a full suite of sails flying in Phuket, Thailand

And so the Liberty 458 was born from an extended 44’ hull and a much reduced 47’ interior! Distant Drummer is one of only thirty one yachts built to this specification before the designers were at it again. They extended the hull (and the interior) to create a 49’ boat of which eleven were made before production finally ground to a halt.

Our boat is hull number 7 but did not start as Distant Drummer. She was launched as Yvern, then changed to Nightwatch and she was finally named Distant Drummer by her third owner.

Chilling out in the cockpit

We bought Distant Drummer in Phuket in March 2006. In fact we found her in Phuket but actually bought her in Langkawi, a nearby Malaysian duty-free island. The return journey to Phuket was not without incident, first of all we “parked” her on a coral bombie at Ko Rok Nai (known to us as Ko Rok Thud). We managed to kedge her off then the next day, as we were approaching Yacht Haven in Phuket, we ran aground again on a sand bank and had to wait for the tide to lift us off.

Sailing in the Tuamotus, French Polynesia

Since that ignomious start we have sailed about 32,000NM, we have criss-crossed the Tasman Sea three times and traversed the Pacific from New Zealand in the SW to Alaska in the NE. In the last two years we have cruised down the west coast of North and Central America. Distant Drummer is a great boat to sail and a lovely home. Neither she nor we are greyhounds but we move at our own speed which is in tune with the weather and the seasons.