Former Boat Building Academy student Emily Stokes is returning to Lyme Regis as a tutor on the flagship 40-week course.
Emily, who is currently part of the shipwright team working on Victory Live: The Big Repair in Portsmouth, will join Mike Broome in assisting on the course from February 2026. The role comes four years after her own graduation from the BBA.
Emily says: “I can’t wait to start. It will be a privilege to help students launch their own careers in boat building. As well as producing fantastic boat builders, the BBA is committed to the conservation of boat building, and I feel proud to become part of that.”
Emily came to boat building following a career change. After attaining an environmental science degree at Plymouth University, she was a secondary school science teacher before moving into roles for leading environmental charities including The Woodland Trust and South West Coast Path Association. In 2016, inspired by her passions for the sea and woodworking she completed the BBA’s week-long Introduction to Boat Building course.
When the pandemic later led her to working from home, she decided to make the jump to a more practical career: “I went for a walk on the Devon coast with my husband Dean and something just clicked. The bay was full of boats, and I knew I wanted to see boats that I’d built on the water.”
With Dean’s support she signed up for the BBA’s 40-week course. The intensive, full-time course incorporates the City & Guilds Level 3 Diploma in Boatbuilding (Advanced). However, it goes far beyond the requirements of this qualification, providing comprehensive practical instruction in traditional and contemporary boat building construction methods and related skills. Structured in two parts, the first 20 weeks are spent ‘upstairs’ giving students the chance to develop tools skills, before moving to the downstairs workshop to build boats from start to finish using both traditional and modern construction.
Emily continues: “I was in this special place, with all these special people and felt fully engaged and ‘on purpose’ for the first time in a very long time. The course was demanding, but I just gave myself over to it. Looking back, it didn’t just give me practical skills, it helped me build physical and mental skills like resilience, stamina and determination, which are vital for boat builders.”
Following the course she secured a job at Spirit Yachts, in Suffolk, and spent two-and-a-half years there working on luxury yachts.
“It was my first time in a commercial boatyard, and I worked alongside some very experienced people and was able to try many different things – from painting bilges, to creating fine, detailed joinery.”
She and her husband then spent much of the following year travelling across the world – a dream that had been postponed by the pandemic. When she returned to the UK, Emily joined the conservation project Victory Live: The Big Repair in Portsmouth, where she has been working as part of a team of 16 shipwrights alongside archaeologists and conservationists, to preserve the Royal Navy’s historic flagship.
Will Reed, Director of the BBA says: “We are thrilled that Emily is joining the teaching team this year. Our tutors are selected not only for their excellent boat building skills, but also for their ability to communicate, educate and bring out the best in people – Emily has all of this in spades. Her teaching and charities experience, coupled with several years’ working in traditional and modern boat building will set her in good stead and she will be a very welcome addition to our brilliant team. It’s also a hugely exciting time to be joining the BBA as the charity gears up to purchase and improve on its building and we’ll be releasing more information on the scope of the project and how to get involved in the new year.”
Emily says what she is relishing most personally about joining the BBA is the chance to work with all the different BBA students: “One of the unique things about the 40-week course is its diversity – its huge range of different ages, backgrounds, levels of experience and ambitions, all gathered here to study on this industry-renowned course. Some people arrive and simply fly, others, like me, need to develop their skills and confidence more slowly and I hope I can support each student on their journey so that like me they can be amazed by just how much they can reach their potential at the BBA.”
