Campion Sail and Design
Mainly small boat designs - from full plans to simple lines and offsets - for the home boat building enthusiast
These are simply a few pages about some of the small craft - dayboats, racing or sailing dinghies, beach cruisers and canoe yawls, whether balanced lug, gaff or bermudian rigged - that I build - or have built - or have designed - or that are some combination of the three. Based on these are a number of boat building plans and sailing dinghy designs for the home boat builder, from small day-sailers and stitch and glue lug sail dinghies - to 'raid' style sail and oar craft suitable for dinghy or open boat cruising - to several canoe yawl plans - to water or sand-ballasted luggers or half-decked gaff cutters. All the sailing dinghies or day sailers are very able performers, and several of the designs - including some of the balanced lug ones - have been club raced successfully over many years against conventional class dinghies - and that is without the help of a favourable handicap or yardstick rating. Although the boats are very diverse, they share one element in common: they are, I believe, among the very best of their type, as I trust the photos on the following pages will help make clear.
Construction covers glued clinker both with and without ribs, single, double chine and multi-chine stitch and glue, conventional ply construction, and tortured ply, with rigs from fully battened bermudian sails to balanced lugs, hulls from snub-ended praams to double-ended yawls, from development class dinghies to simple traditional style dayboats. There is also a short section on George Holmes and his small 'Ethel' canoe yawls from the late nineteenth century.
For further information about various sailing boat plans for small craft such as: the 'Apple 16' day boat lugger or cutter and its variations; the 'Pearl 16' gaff cutter or gunter yawl; as well as some of the other designs such as the multi chine 'Iceni 12' and 'Iceni 14' and 'Iceni 16' stitch-and-glue lug sail dinghy designs; the glued lapstrake balanced lug dinghy 'IO 11-12'; the stitch and glue conically developed canoe yawl 'Imp'; the glued clinker canoe yawl day sailer 'Electra'; the stitch and tape or clinker double-ended dayboat 'Circe'; the gunter yawl, clinker built dinghy 'Arethusa 15'; the four plank stitched-seam double ender 'Campion', a lug or gunter yawl water ballasted dayboat; the 'Apple 13' multi-chine balanced lug sail and oar design; the glued clinker or multi-chine rowing praams such as the 'Spice 11'; the 'Annie 18' gaff cutter or gunter yawl dayboat; the lug sail racer 'Tiger Lily'; together with photos or details and plan prices, follow the relevant links in the table above. The designs cover car-toppable as well as trailable wooden - specifically ply and epoxy - boats.
Oh, and as for the name of the site, a question that sometimes is asked, it's named after sea campion, a white flower of the foreshore, shingle and sea cliff that flowers in this country throughout the sailing season: not delicate, overly retiring nor particularly pretty, but distinctive, indomitable and appealing in a salt-water environment - a bit like my boats, I hope.
'Resurrection' - all eleven feet of her - really stepping out and showing what a scow can do. The photo below courtesy of Robin Stubbs, UK
Email: td@campionboats.co.uk
Trust you enjoy the site!
