The 62nd annual Boothbay Harbor Windjammer Days will take place on Sunday, June 23 through Saturday, June 29. This year we will celebrate our local boatbuilders and shipwrights. Please visit boothbayharborwindjammerdays.org for the full schedule of events.

David originally got hooked on sailing in 1959 at age five, cruising in the Herreshoff S boat Widgeon with his family. Then when he was about 10 years old he started collecting old wooden boats to fix up, but they never got fixed up until he had learned something about woodworking in 8th grade shop class. In his 10th grade shop class, David designed and built his first boat. His teacher said that the boat looked like the
“box that it came in,” but it didn’t leak during sea trials. Better looking boats were yet to come.

In his late teens and early twenties David apprenticed with catboat builder Merton Long, his neighbor in Bourne, Massachusetts. Mert was born on Roque Island, Maine in 1885 and worked in Maine shipyards planking 4-masted schooners until moving to Cape Cod in 1907. He was without a doubt the biggest influence in David’s boatbuilding career, teaching him the finer points of catboat design and many valuable tricks of the trade. Other major influences have been: his father, Paul Stimson (now 96 years old) who taught him the basics of sailing and seamanship and much of the engineering knowledge required to design and build boats; the late John Gardner, small craft curator at Mystic Seaport; the late Pete Culler, a traditional boat designer/builder of Hyannis, Massachusetts; Nat Wilson, sailmaker in East Boothbay, who has given much valuable advice for sail and rigging plans for his designs, as well as making sails and rigging for most of their boats; Nat Benjamin and Ross Gannon of Gannon & Benjamin of Vineyard Haven who were both extraordinary shipwrights.

In 1973 David became lead carpenter at Kingman Marine in Cataumet, Massachusetts, repairing traditional wooden boats. Then in 1974 he bought a large building in Lubec with the idea of starting a boat shop. There was no market for wooden boat work there, and he had the only sailboat within 50 miles, so he moved back to the Cape to work on boats there.

David established Stimson Brothers Boatworks in 1976 in North Falmouth, Massachusetts with his brother Mark, focusing on building and restoring wooden boats. His first big job was the first phase of a major restoration on the 1918 McManus schooner Surprise, which now sails out of Camden.

Later David moved to Boothbay in 1981 and established Stimson Marine in his parent’s barn on River Road. There he built and restored many wooden boats, including boats for the Kevin Costner movies, “Bodyguard” and “Waterworld.” He traveled back to Massachusetts in 1997 going to Martha's Vineyard to work with Gannon and Benjamin and building the 60-foot schooner Rebecca. By 1999 David had obtained his USCG 100-ton masters license with sail endorsement.

Moving back to Maine, he became general manager of the Boothbay Harbor Shipyard from 2004 to 2010. There he worked on larger vessels including Gazella of Philadelphia, Bounty, Jamestown Replica Discovery, Shenandoah and Belaventure, and also designed and built the original schooner Valora. After that he left the Shipyard to build a new boat shop on the River Road. With the help from sons Abraham and
Nathaniel and other local shipwrights, he rebuilt the 56-foot Alden Schooner Bagheera, designed and built the 50-foot steel schooner Naviamo, which was later finished off by the owner, designed and built a second 43’ schooner Valora, as the first was wrecked in a northeast storm in 2010.

Both sons are excellent boatbuilders, and Nathaniel also is a fine draftsman and designer, working as co-designer on many projects. Since 2022 David has been working at his new shop in Warren. He is currently restoring a 27-foot catboat, built by George Shiverick of Kingston, Massachusetts in 1933, for a non-profit preservation organization at Lewis Bay, Massachusetts (see lbay.org). He is also presently working
with Sailing Ships Maine, a non profit youth sail training organization based in Portland, refurbishing a 42-foot Murray Peterson schooner with help from many volunteers. At the same time, he is designing a 16-foot rowing skiff for youth boatbuilding/rowing programs to be offered soon by the organization. The future holds an exciting prospect of a collaboration as in-house designers with Clark & Eisele Traditional Boatbuilding, one of Maine's premier traditional boatbuilding and repair companies, based in Midcoast Maine.

Besides boat design and building, Stimson Marine has become infamous for selling plans for a bow-roof shed, used for storing boats and also for greenhouses. In the past 32 years, he has mailed thousands of these plans to almost every country in the world.

Of his many wonderful customers, two stand out: Karl Frey, who has ordered five small craft and two schooners and become a close friend in the process, and Ben Swan, past director of Pine Island Camp in Belgrade Lakes, for whom his company built 19 wooden boats over the years and who is also a good friend.

When David is not building boats, he makes and repairs violins and plays traditional Irish and old time fiddle music with wife Tamora Goltz, both sons, and other local musicians in the bands Curlew and Steampacket.