Course: Canoe Building Week on the Isle of Mull

CANOE BUILDING

Total fee - £2200 for Peterborough or £2450 for Prospector 17

Deposit: £550

Archipelago Folkschool are returning for our fourth year building canoes. We are again offering two different boats designed by Paul Fisher: either the Peterborough (15’7”) or the larger Prospector (17’). To see more about the boats please look at the Our Boats page. Because of the larger size and extra seat in the Prospector, we charge an additional £250 for that boat.

We do our best to balance you building your own boat with making sure everything is done on time, so we’ll be on hand to help keep everything moving, but we’ll also work together as a group to get everyone done!

It’s a busy week to get everything done, this is an intensive week of quite hard work and you’ll be on your feet most of the time. We’ve always managed to get everyone’s boats built, but depending on the group it can involve some long days - finishing after 7pm is not unheard of. Despite the hard work it’s really good fun, very sociable and incredibly rewarding.

At the end of the week your boat will be fully functional but will need around 30-40 hours of finishing work. We will offer complete guidance and support while you do this. You’ll need to transport the finished boat home so roof bars are essential.

2024 Dates:

18-25 May
8-15 June
22-29 June
20-27 July
24-31 August

The course fee includes all materials, tuition, and all tools and equipment you need to get the boat built. We’ll provide an endless supply of tea, coffee, biscuits and fruit to keep you going too! The course fee includes camping on our croft and use of the workshop’s self-catering kitchen. We’ll provide a welcome meal on the Saturday night too.

This booking is for two people building 1 boat between them. It is possible to do it as a solo person but it’s a lot more work, so unless you are very sure of your own abilities, we strongly recommend recruiting a helper. This course is also well suited to parent or guardians working with older children, we are happy to have younger people involved provided a responsible adult is always present. We’ve had kids as young as 9 working on these boats but we feel usually it suits those 12 or older. As we often need to provide a bit more support to solo builders or those with younger helpers, do get in touch before booking to be sure we have enough support on hand to make it work. We are really happy, in fact keen to be flexible. Many people have a family holiday around the boat build with other people stopping in to see what is happening, and even helping out if there is space and time! Feel free to let us know what would work for your group.

While this course includes camping, if you want more luxurious accommodation we strongly recommend that you book somewhere to stay on Mull as soon as possible, as many places get booked up early. We’ve written a guide here. Any problems or further questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Read more & book

Read more about Archipelago Folkschool, one of our Shipshape Network Scotland projects.