Our Courses
2025 dates now taking bookings! Fee £2100-2450 depending on boat choice
Join us for a week on Mull and build your very own beautiful boat to take home with you. In just 7 days you’ll go from a novice boatbuilder with (perhaps) no experience in woodwork at all, to the proud owner of a stunning new boat with a huge range of new skills and a some great new friends made. It all happens in our purpose built workshop on our croft on the Isle of Mull with glorious views, great beaches nearby and just enough breeze to keep the midges at bay.
There is a lot to get done to build a boat in a week so this is a full week’s activity, we start at lunchtime on the Saturday and work full days all the way through to the Friday. You should expect to be on your feet and working hard every day, often finishing in the workshop after 5pm. We do our absolute best to make it achievable for everyone though, we’ve had parents with 8 year old kids and retired couples in their 80s complete the week - we are proud to say that everyone who has come on our courses since 2017 has left with a beautiful boat without fail!
You can come either solo or as a pair, though we strongly recommend bringing a helper if you can - especially if building a canoe, these are a lot of work for a solo builder. We build the a choice of three different boats on our weeks, all made of marine plywood, solid douglas fir and fibreglass to make a very strong but very light boat. To read more about the boats head to Our Boats page.
We do our best to find that tricky balance between having a good time, learning skills and getting a quality boat at the end of the week. After nearly 100 boats built we think we’re pretty good at finding that sweet spot - you can see that previous builders agree on our Trustpilot page! At the end of the week your boat will be ready to float and use, but you will need to finish the job at home, it’ll need about 40 hours of work to paint or varnish your boat ready for a lifetime of happy paddling. We provide lots of guidance and full support for this part of the process so don’t be daunted!
Included in your course fee is optional camping next to the workshop and use of the self catering kitchen, toilets and showers in the space. For those who want a bit more luxury we have a yurt (soon to be 2) on our land that we rent out through AirBnB, it’s got a real bed and a lovely wee wood stove, if you’d like to upgrade your accommodation just choose that option at the time of booking. We provide a shared meal together on the first night of the course, but otherwise the rest of the week is self catering.
Our 2025 dates are:
May 17th to 24th
June 21st to 28th
July 19th to 26th
August 16th to 23rd
Course fee varies with which boat you are building but we charge by boat, so it’s the same if you are solo or coming as a pair - £2200 for Peterborough, £2450 for Prospector and £2100 for Shrike.
