A busy and interesting summer for Stirling and Son

Stirling and Son 14ft dinghy

Stirling and Son are busy as usual this summer with varied work both in and around Plymouth and further afield.

Stirlings must be counted one of the most interesting boat building and design operations around. Down at their covered slipway at Plymouth, the pilot cutter Cornubia is having her hatches re-varnished and a replica Viking longboat is being repaired.

Further afield, in May a small team went to Germany to work on the 60ft teak built Mylne yacht Mingary. This is a link to a video of work on the yacht. See a video of the work on that job below:

In June Sara and Will visited Glasgow for the Clyde Classic Design Symposium and delivered a talk about the process of designing the new Victorian racing cutter Integrity at the Royal Northern and Clyde Yacht Club.

The plans for the 14ft sailing dinghy that Sara and Will sailed around the Eddystone Lighthouse and then across the Channel are now available. The plans comprise lines, sail plan, construction plan and technical detail with templates of the backbone, knees, rudder and moulds.

The study plans show the level of detail and are accompanied by a materials list and a scantlings list. The plans are not available through the website (which is due to be updated). For information on the plans please email Will at info@stirlingandson.co.uk.

14ft sailing dinghy study plans

In Spain Martin Scannall has built and launched a 9ft dinghy built to Stirling and Son plans. She is to be the tender to the cutter Sauntress.

At the other end of the scale Will is working in conjunction with naval architect Theo Rye on the design of a 140 ton topsail schooner of circa 1830 that is to be built in the far East.

Stirling and Son undertake traditional boat building and wooden boat repair and have an office at Tavistock, tel 01822 614259, and a covered yard at Devonport, tel 07727 233346.

Pierhead painter Dominique Perotin’s portrait of newly built Victorian racing yacht Integrity

Integrity Painting

French pierhead painter Dominique Perotin has produced this portrait of the newly-built Victorian gentleman’s racing yacht Integrity – and it seems to me that she has joined the wonderful yacht’s growing legion of admirers. (Click on the link to see her website.)

Integrity was designed and built by traditional yacht builders and wooden boat repairers Stirling and Son of Tavistock, Devon and is listed for sale via the company website. There are also quite a few posts about her here at intheboatshed.netclick on this link and follow the trail of ‘older posts’ links to find them.

Integrity sailing 6

Integrity in flight

On the subject of Stirlings, boat builders sometimes get some funny commissions. Will Stirling and his colleagues have recently been building a pair of dinghy seats for a pub. I guess if a drinker feels wobbly some time, they can put it down to sitting in a boat, rather than blame the beer and wine…

Stirling & Son dinghy seat

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 ChroniclesFrancis 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!