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.
[citation needed] 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.
[citation needed] Despite the tragedies encountered on Piver vessels around the time of his death, examples of his boxy cruising designs nonetheless remain in use to this day.
[2] A well built Piver, while not as "modern" as new tris, will still hold their own and are quite suitable for cruising, especially when modified with a Norm Cross design "fin keel and large area spade rudder".
It was Arthur Piver's bang-'em-together, sheet-plywood boats that launched the modern multihull movement in the early Sixties—simultaneously setting its advancement back a dozen years.
It wasn't Piver's fault that so many backyard builders erected condominiums atop his slender hulls, giving multihulls an ugly duckling reputation from which they're only now recovering.Piver's voyages broadened the public perception of seaworthiness for the trimaran concept and in a very short time.
In his book Trimaran Solo, Tetley admitted that he never built his Victress strong enough to survive the rigors of the race because he never intended to sail her across an ocean.
[citation needed] He responded with the AA "Advanced Amateur" range with a sleek, fast profile using fiberglass over marine plywood and using double chines to improve his boats' underwater shape.
[citation needed] Piver's later 33' boat Stiletto was no match for the sleek molded fiberglass cats from Prout and Sailcraft and Kelsall's sandwich tris.