3 sources · updated 20 Oct 2026
Arthur Piver, born in 1910, was a World War II pilot who lived in Mill Valley on San Francisco Bay. A printshop owner and amateur sailor, he began designing simple plywood trimarans in the late 1950s, from a 16-footer up to a 64-footer built in England for Caribbean charter. His plans, sold to home builders through his company Pi-Craft, made the cruising multihull popular.
In 1960 he crossed the Atlantic aboard Nimble, a demountable 30-footer, from Swansea, Massachusetts to Plymouth via the Azores. In 1961 he sailed Lodestar, a 35-foot trimaran, from San Francisco to New Zealand. He wrote several books about these voyages.
His boats, stable but poor upwind, were later outpaced by composite multihulls from British yards. A Piver Victress sailed by Nigel Tetley completed a circumnavigation in the 1968-69 Golden Globe. To enter the 1968 OSTAR, Piver needed a 500-mile solo qualifying passage: he left San Francisco in a borrowed 25-foot trimaran and was never seen again in 1968.