The Craftsmen - Ashley Butler

My earliest memories are of my parents' seventeen-foot Lysander standing in our back garden, it was huge and I was only two years old. At age ten I was given, for my birthday, the wreck of a sixteen-foot Yachting Monthly Senior. My Dad and I rebuilt her in our spare time. I then started a four-year part time apprenticeship with East Coast shipwright Allan Staley, learning the traditional skills and finding my place as a wooden boat builder.

Aged seventeen I went to college and over two years gained a City and Guilds Level 3 qualification in "Small Craft Design and Naval Architecture". The complexity of modern boat design and construction enhanced my appreciation of traditional craft, such as the simple, small working cutters of the British Isles. These were often built by three men in three months and many lasted for over a hundred years. Most of their life was spent in a harsh and commercial environment working on and off shore during winter storms.

After college I built Ziska, a one hundred year old prawner from the west coast of England. Between her and her replacement, after she was sold, I sailed over twenty-five thousand miles in the two working cutters - all engineless and often single-handed. I built Sally B in Martha's Vineyard, USA, by eye using the traditional techniques of the end of the 19th Century but with the aid of modern machinery. I found this method to be fast, simple and therefore cost-effective, with a fast and seaworthy end result. I believe that these tried and tested design and building techniques are ideally suited to yachts of the 21st Century. It is this philosophy that has lead me to establishing Butler & Co as builders of traditional wooden boats which comply with present day European Regulations.