Arthur Piver

Arthur Piver (/ˈpaɪvər/; "Piver rhymes with diver"; 1910–1968) was a World War II pilot, an amateur sailor, author, printshop owner and legendary boatbuilder who lived in Mill Valley on San Francisco Bay and became "the father of the modern multihull." He also introduced new changes to the superfice of the boat, for better hydrodinamic, but he had no agreement.

In the late 1950s and 1960s Piver designed and built a series of simple three-hulled, plywood yachts starting with a 16 footer and culminating in a 64-footer that was built in England for charter in the Caribbean. (The word "trimaran" was coined by Viktor Tchetchet, a Ukrainian emigrant to the US who tested his boats on Long Island sound in the late 1940s.) Piver crossed the Atlantic on his first ocean-going boat, the demountable 30 foot Nimble, departing from Swansee, Mass, stopping in the Azores, and successfully reaching Plymouth, England. He then began selling do-it-yourself plans through a company called Pi-Craft. He thought anyone could build one of his boats even if they had no experience.

In 1962, Piver built himself a 35-foot ketch-rigged trimaran named Lodestar and sailed it around the Pacific Ocean via New Zealand. In England, Cox Marine started building his boats and found a ready market, often with Americans who would sail them home. In 1964, Derek Kelsall bought a Lodestar bare hull, completed it with a flush deck, and entered the Observer Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race. After ten days, he was ahead of Eric Tabarly when he struck some flotsam and broke his daggerboard and rudder. He returned to England for replacements, restarted and still finished in a respectable time.

People who met Piver say he was a social man who enjoyed being the center of attention in his circle of boating friends and felt that the trimaran was his own personal invention. He was the "singlehander" type---he wrote about singlehanding in his books and made several solo passages. He also did not believe in using motors and only allowed for the inclusion upon insistence from home builders. Provisions were made for motor wells in his later designs. To him the use of motors was not being a true "sailor". Piver was allegedly driven to enter the Trans-Atlantic solo race because it was the only prestigious long-distance race in the world open to every type of boat.

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