"Passport" 45 Ketch

[Ian Macrae]

I meet a boat named Julia Max and discovered something new to me. The "Passport" 45 Ketch, aka Peterson/Liberty 45 aka Liberty 458. Posting this just for general info.

Here's a link to a website talking about it:  http://www.tcls.com/passport_45/

I cut and pasted this:

"An excerpt from a letter from Wagner Stevens Yatchts, makers of the current Passports, to a friend when they were selling their boat...

Your Passport 45 is one of a handfull built in 1981 and 1982 by the Shin-Fa yard in Taiwan under contract for Peter Hoyt.Your hull and deck came from the Peterson 44 mold, several of which were build in the 1970s. Subsequently, that same hull mold was used to build Peter Hoyt's Liberty 458 series with new deck tooling.

Peter Hoyt was a cruising friend of Passport Yachts founder Wendell Renken. In 1980, Wendell Renken engaged Peter Hoyt to be the U.S. representative for Passport Yachts. After a year of doing business, Peter Hoyt decided that he'd rather build boats than represent them, so he moved to Taiwan, acquired rights to the Peterson 44 tooling, and began building boats. He was unable to obtain an export license, so (in those early, freewheeling days of Far Eastern yacht construction) Wendell Renken permitted Peter Hoyt to use the Passport license to export his yachts. Hence the name "Passport" 45.

While we would like to take credit for having build your fine yacht, the truth is that neither the designer, builder, nor contract yard had anything to do with Passport Yachts, other than the use of the export license.

For brokerage marketing purposes, that creates a small but not insurmountable problem. You have a well built, fast sailing cruising yacht that speaks for herself, after all. The problem is that brokers, buyers, price guides, and surveyors don't know what a "Passport"45 is.

Sister ships of your "Passport" 45 Ketch have sold in brokerage advertised as Peterson 44s, Liberty 458s, and Peterson/Liberty 45s. There is a viable market on both coasts for Peterson 44s, and you may find profit in advertising your yacht as such, with an explanation on the specification sheet summarizing my comments above. In fact, your yacht would compare favorably to the regular Peterson 44s on the market, since your interior joinery is finished in solid teak staving, whereas the Peterson 44s have teak veneer with solid teak accents.

Steve"

Ian
P40 Freyja

[David Hilliar]

Interesting, one of the boats I looked prior to purchasing Ace was advertised as a Peterson 46 but it differed from all the rest of the Peterson's in that she was ketch rigged. The interior layout was slightly different to the brochure shown but to me it looks like she is definitely a Passport 45.  Her name is Tiki and she is now just up from me in Bayswater Marina, Auckland.

David

SV Ace

Auckland

[robhen...@hotmail.com]

I can embellish a little more on that story --as from the 1985 Nautical Quarterly article written on China Doll-- that Wendel was able to also export/import Doug Peterson's boats, along with the Liberty 45 as a Passport, because as the sorry goes:

Wendel was in the exotic Eel Skin and Teak Funiture manufacturing and export business and used a teak furniture export/import license to deliver his and "other" boats to the US.

So if you're catching this correctly, all of his boats in the 1980s had enough teak in them to be able to be imported as 'teak furniture' to the US, FOB on ships. Once in the US these 'teak furniture pieces' were transformed into sailing yachts!

This is why our wiring and panel on China Doll was done by Newmar and our Perkins Engine was installed, all in Long Beach CA.