Elysium was built in Costa Mesa in 1972. She is a CAL T/2. This refers to ½ ton. The famous designer, Bill Lapworth (deceased April '06) put forth a plan to modify his popular CAL 27 to meet the International Offshore Racing Rule (IOR). The IOR Rule was newly hatched in the 70’s and many designers were trying to build to suit the rule requirements. Lapworth simply redesigned his 27 footer, a fast and light model, by adding a roof coach to allow standing headroom, as well as other necessary modifications.

Of note, is the history of this famous designer. Prior to his vision, truly a leap of imagination, nearly all production sailboats rudders were incorporated into the end of a long, but shallow full keel profile.

Beginning with the Cal 40 for his client George Griffith, the well-known Long Beach yacht racer, Lapworth designed some of the first production sailboats with a fin keel attached forward and a separate spade rudder attached toward the stern end of the boat. This was unheard of and laughed at by other designers and production builders until his boat won and won and won.

They weren’t laughing anymore! They all started copying his idea. The commercial success of the Cal 40 was immediately followed by more fin keel, spade rudder boats ranging in size from 20 to 48 feet.

Today the design continues in nearly all modern sailboats and the still famous CAL 40 still ranks near the top in the Transpacific (Transpac) race, even compared with the latest and greatest racing yachts. Just look at the results for the last two Transpacs.

All 1970’s era boats were built by laying multiple plies of polyester-resin-impregnated fiberglass cloth, woven roving and mat and resin, again and again, until the desired thickness was achieved. Unlike today’s “sandwich/cored” boats, Elysium is solid fiberglass! No core means no rot. Hence the term "Classic Plastic".