Tag: boat plans

Photos of Stirling & Son Victorian cutter build

Stirling & Son Victorian cutter Integrity housed dovetail on companion (never to be seen again!)

Difficult-looking housed dovetail joint

Stirling & Son Victorian cutter Integrity ash and copper fastened blocks Stirling & Son Victorian cutter Integrity bronze bound bowsprit roller Stirling & Son Victorian cutter Integrity finishing the 24ft bowsprit

Ash and copper fastened blocks; bronze-bound bowsprit roller; finishing the 24ft bowsprit

Will Stirling of Stirling & Son has sent in some more photographs from the building of the Victorian-style cutter Integrity. Here’s what he has to say:

‘Integrity is coming on well. We are putting on her deck which has been an exercise in higher mathematics. It is tapered and swept so that the outboard planks follow the covering board yet the planks midships are on the centreline. A typically Victorian attitude of seeking the aesthetic with little regard for labour!

‘To us it seems relatively complicated; as one of the shipwrights wryly commented, perhaps that is why it died out! I shall send a photo of the sequence once it is all on.

‘Hope all continues well, best wishes,

‘Will’

 

Will and his colleagues are always up to something interesting, and he has a very interesting range of plans for traditional craft for sale. For more posts about Stirling & Son, click here.

Stirling & Son traditional yacht building and wooden boat repair is based at Tavistock, Devon. For more information see www.stirlingandson.co.uk.

 

Boat Racing Association A-Class One Design Dinghy specifications and drawings

A-Class one design dinghy specification

A-Class one design dinghy specification

Brian Smith has sent in interesting scans of the specification for the delightful Boat Racing Association A-Class One Design Dinghy, which I gather is a very close relative to the International 12. I’ll let him tell the story:

‘Hi Gav,

‘I attach drawings and specifications of the BRA 12ft dinghy as published in the Yachtsman of 12 June 1913, which could be of interest to your readers as I believe they were little changed for the International 12ft dinghy class.

‘George Cockshott [the designer of the International 12] was a frequent and sometimes successful entrant in design competitions in the Yachtsman and Yachting Monthly, although it is not certain that any of those designs were ever built. The 12ft dinghy design was the result of a competition run by the BRA. Cockshott may have been inspired by the 12ft restricted class sailed at Hoylake, West Kirby and Rhyl. The design does seem to have been influenced by the class.

‘The largest yacht designed by Cockshott appears to have been the 19 tons TM Nautilus II built by R Lathom at Crossens, near Southport in 1902.

‘Hope this is of interest,

‘Brian’

Thanks Brian – it certainly is. I love all that old-fashioned specification stuff: ‘The whole of each boat, inside and out, to be varnished four coats best yacht varnish. (Or, if desired by the owner, the bottom to be painted three coats and finished with anitfouling composition or enamel externally, and to be painted three coats internally). The name or number to be written in gold leaf and shaded, on the transom or as may be required.‘

For a post on George Cockshott’s International 12 dinghy, click here.

The migrations of an American boat type

Sharpie drawing

Sharpies have rather gone out of fashion since they were the talk of the boating forums a decade ago, but I still think it’s worth reminding ourselves about these strikingly elegant North American craft.

This drawing of a typical New Haven sharpie comes from a Project Gutenberg eBook of Howard Chappelle’s classic study of the sharpie, The Migrations of an American Boat Type, which I first read on paper long ago.

I vividly remember the excited anticipation of waiting for it to arrive in an exotic foreign – but thanks to the Gutenberg Project  folks you, dear reader, can obtain access to this stuff in a moment, and completely free of charge.

PS – I picked this up through reading the excellent US website Duckworksmagazine.com.