41 ft trimaran Invictus almost ready to splash

[SVInvictus2332]

I purchased a decimated Invictus 2.5 yrs ago, have been rebuilding her and refitting her, I've done a lot of restructuring and interior building, converting this once racer into a world cruiser. Check progress at my Instagram, Sailing_galliard or my YouTube " IrishYouWereHere". If anyone has any cool or interesting stories about this gem please message me, I'd love to hear them.

[Jim Peace]

Wow that's great news! Invictus deserves another chance. I had the privilege of sailing aboard her in a race with Larry Christensen in Summer 1986. That's where he told me about how she got her name and the several Trans-pacs he sailed her in. For some reason, the race organizers required all multi-hulls to start last. We were never able to catch the lead boats, with their huge head start, but had a lot of fun blowing past all the other contenders with our spinnaker flying high and proud!
Larry loved ballroom dancing and trained at the studio where I taught. A couple times he took a bunch of us teachers out for a Sunday sunbathing excursion. With so many pretty women in bathing suits, I'm not sure he was always looking out for obstacles in the waterway!
Anyway I was sad but not surprised to hear of Larry's passing. I know he'll happily be right there with you in spirit when you take Invictus on the next chapter of her life.
By the way, did you ever find the can of pork and beans from an old Trans-Pac he swore was "around here somewhere"? If a crewman got on his bad side, he would threaten to make them eat it. I always wanted to make it into a trophy!

[SVInvictus2332]

No pork and beans , I was really intrigued reading your story about the Invictus, larry, sunbathing, obstacles, these are the stories I love to read, thank you for your reply. J.Mckeefry

[jdazey]

If you've done some interior restructuring, you're way ahead of Larry I hope you've run the daggerboard trunk up through the deck. In one race we did with Larry we doing around 15kts. The main hull half filled with water coming up through the top of the trunk. We got Larry who was at the helm to take a peek below. That's the only time Larry was heard to shout "Slow this boat down!". We stuffed socks, towels, sheets, anything we could find to jam in the trunk and slow the leak. Sailing with Larry was always an adventure. He was a great guy, had a tremendous sense of humor, and we still miss him.


Cheers,

[ejlindahl]

Wow Mr McKeefry,

So good to hear from you. I never look in this part of the forum so missed this thread. I'm glad that one of our NW Multihull Club members sent me the link to here. Our club still has many members who have sailed with Larry including some of his regular crew. Perhaps you've found them already. FWIW I think if you'd have posted in the multihull part of this forum I'm sure you'd have garnered more comments and information. The thread is kind of hidden over here in the Scuttlebutt section. I highly recommend you restart this thread over there in the Multihull subsection. I think you'll get many more helpful comments and interesting stories.

Anyway, its good to hear from you. We club members have had considerable discussion about the where Invictus was? What was/is it's status? And what is its future. I really hope you join us via this link) and come to our meetings in Seattle or just attend via Zoom via notices in this link. (The website in the link is a quick fix, place holder, when Google stopped supporting our old site. Some of our techie members are working on a new site.)

As a new member of the club back in 2014 I met and talked at length with Larry several time before he passed. He was quite a guy and coincidently was a founding member of the ski club at Crystal Mountain that I'm in. Perhaps you know that Invictus was built and designed by Larry and was, for many years starting in the 1960's, the fastest sailboat of any length on Puget Sound. Larry's old crew, good friend, and still club member, Rick S, ended up with a bunch of sails and other items from Invictus. Rick was asked to find new homes for them to honor Larry's legacy. I'm honored to have ended up with the boat's largest spinnaker.

In closing; please start a new thread in the Multihull Forum on this site...... and join our club! We would love to hear about your fine effort to bring new life into this famous, ground breaking and well loved Northwest Classic.

Eric, Secretary, NW Multihull Association