Tag: Alker Tripp

Get the Lodestar Books catalogue now – there’s just time to place an order before Christmas

Lodestar Books catalogue

I’m loving the Lodestar Books catalogue – partly because it’s a lovely piece of work, but also because of what it contains.

First of all there are the books Lodestar has already published, including artist Tony Watts’ collection An Eye for a Boat; the H Alker Tripp collection Tripp Under Sail; the Ken Duxbury collection The Lugworm Chronicles; Francis B Cooke’s superb Cruising Hints; 7th edition; Tony Watts’ magnificent volume Holmes of the Humber; H Lewis Jones’ wonderful Swin, Swale and Swatchway; WE Sinclair’s half-crazy Cruises of the Joan, and Conor O’Brien’s instructive but splenetic On Going to Sea in Yachts.

And then there are the volumes to come in 2013: In Shoal Waters by East Coast small boat sailing guru Charles Stock (February 2013);  Under the Cabin Lamp by Alker Tripp (March 2013); Catalan Castaway by Ben Crawshaw (April 2013); Sheila in the Wind by Adrian Hayter (May 2013); Racing the Seas by Ahto Walter and Tom Olsen (May 2013); Sea-Boats, Oars and Sails by Conor O’Brien (May 2013); and a new book from Will Stirling, Details of Dinghy Building.

Congratulations to Lodestar’s Dick Wynne for establishing such an impressive collection of published in an amazingly short few years!

Alker Tripp trilogy now available from Lodestar Books

The beautiful 1920s Alker Tripp trilogy of books about sailing on the South Coast, coastal Suffolk and the Thames Estuary is now available to order from Lodestar Books. Deliveries will begin in early June.

If you happen to be going to the Beale Park Thames Boat Show on the 8th to 10th June, do drop by the Lodestar stall to have a look, as there’s a good chance they will have arrived.

The books – Solent & the Southern Waters, Suffolk Sea Borders and Shoalwater and Fairway – add up to 550 pages of  writing describing sailing these waters at a time when working sail was still common, and their place in English history.

But more than that, Tripp was a gifted illustrator who filled his books with pen drawings and  miniature monchrome paintings, which in these books are laid out with a between-the-wars art deco sensibility.

To show what I mean, here’s a sample chapter Down on the Blackwater ebb, from Shoalwater and Fairway – though what you can’t see here is the lovely thick creamy paper on which they have been printed.

The books are available singly at £20 each, with all three together priced at £45. To make sure you receive yours click here!

Still on the topic of the wonderful Lodestar catalogue, the FB Cooke compendium Cruising Hints is now available in a compact paperback format – only a few copies of the hardcover edition still remain.

Finally, I gather Lodestar’s reprint of Ken Duxbury’s trilogy The Lugworm Chronicles (Lugworm on the Loose, Lugworm Homeward Bound and Lugworm Island Hopping) is selling strongly having had a great reception right around the world.

I can see why it should sell – I’m mightily impressed by first of the trilogy about sailing through the Greek islands, and I now have no doubt how the reputation of the Drascombe Lugger was sealed.