A9m Sail Numbers

Ian's A9m "Spearhead" undergoing some maintenance.

Compiled by Ian Wallace and copied from the old web site as written by him with a few necessary changes regarding feedback, the "for Sail" flag has also been removed due to difficulty in maintaining it.

This is an attempt to make sense of the scattered fleet of boats of the above design built by Chris J Butler at Gowerton (later in Swansea itself) between 1974 and ?1989.

Unfortunately Butlers did not mark the boats themselves with their build number (although each did have one for obvious reasons) and this has resulted in some confusion as to the exact identity and age of many of them. Factory records were lost in the later years following at least one fire, but fortunately two build lists were printed and distributed to the then owners in January 1976 and January 1980, and these formed my starting point, going up to hull #061. Not all boats had names when they were built, especially those sold to agents abroad and "kit" boats and, indeed, it's not known for sure exactly how many there were. So it's highly unlikely that this list will ever be completed....

To find your hull / build number:

Butler's never numbered their hulls on the gelcoat, but just put the build number, as a recognition number, on the mainsail (if they ordered it from the sailmaker). There does remain some hope of finding it, however - because the carpenters would usually write it on the back of each piece of plywood as they fitted it, you may yet find it accidentally somewhere (if not very clearly written). Since a proportion of the boats were sold as kits, the carpenters may not have fitted all the parts but, because of their size, they usually did the cabin ceiling panels, so that’s a good place to start.

The number you are looking for is 3 digits beginning with a "0"; there may be "9m" in front of that. Note there is always the leading zero. On my own boat it's written rather faintly in pencil so you could easily overlook it altogether. If your sail number has been changed to a more official-type racing number, has the original number been incorporated into it? The authorities in those days could be quite obliging in reducing the number of new digits required for the sails, so long as they got an extra fiver for it! Examination of the list shows several instances, including mine, which has grown from "027" to" 9027C".

What you get in this database:

The table of boats was compiled using Microsoft Excel in earlier times and Apache Open Office more recently; the ".xls" format in which it's stored should be openable with most spreadsheet programs. If not, please let me know; contact info follows below. Most of the columns are self-explanatory but in case puzzlement arises, here are some notes:

Column C = Date This is the date on which I found the most recent "report".

Column G = Built The year in which the boat, hull or kit left the factory - if a kit, it might not have been launched for some years, and some later date may be claimed. Agents' dates unreliable.

Column H = Keels An asterisk denotes something possibly non-standard - look in the notes on extreme right.

Column K = Hull Problem to describe all the combinations! "\" denotes stern colour carried forward full length/height of strake; "|" stern colour not carried forward; "--" topsides divided horizontally.

Column N = Kit (my guess from photo's) k = kit, n = yard-completed.

Click here to open the spread sheet from Ian's site.

If you find errors or can add more details, please add a comment below or e-mail admin and in due season the spreadsheet will get updated.

Source text last updated 20 December 2018.