Feel the wind in your hair and taste the salt on your lips as you sail on board your own private yacht. Escape to pristine island waters and anchor in sheltered and secluded bays. Share a unique sailing experience with friends and family or join the discerning sailing fraternity.
Ashanti can accommodate up to seven people. With a gaff rigged schooner you can sail solo or get your guests to help sail the vessel; throw a fishing line, swim, snorkel, wander ashore on secluded beaches, or simply relax on the deck and soak up the sun.
Built with the tradition of a past age, Ashanti is from the drawing board of the American designer VB Crockett, an elegant Nimble gaff schooner of traditional lines. Redrawn by Bruce Roberts as a Roberts 32, Ashanti has been built with modern materials and methods. Launched in December 2010, she was hand built over six years using the Gougeon Brothers West System strip planking fibreglass and epoxie by Colin Aburrow. The embedded video shows Colin’s workmanship.
Colin’s dream was to sail Ashanti from Mandurah in Western Australia to the Friendly Islands in Papua New Guinea. She was built with distant cruising in mind and as such was fitted out for this purpose with the KISS principle uppermost in thought. An idealist, Colin turned his hand to craft almost every aspect of her build, from strip planking the hull to splicing the galvanised wire rigging. The fitout of the living quarters was influenced by world circumnavigating sailors and their observations of what worked best in their opinions. His vision was to create a beautiful, sustainable, robust and simple vessel he could sail single handed and which required little in the way of high maintenance electronics.
We were fortunate enough to acquire Ashanti in May 2015. Since that time we’ve come to appreciate the extraordinary craftsmanship and the beautiful simplicity of her design. Penned at Fremantle Sailing Club most weekends see Ashanti sailing to Rottnest, Carnac or Garden Islands including the occasional over night voyage to Mandurah. For a month or two she was briefly my home and, as with a fine musical instrument, during this time I learned the subtlety of her chords.
This website charts Ashanti’s history, from the inspiration for her design, the build, her features and our experiences.