Contact: Pete Hall
Phone: 804-693-9335
Email: phall27@cox.net

The Mathews Maritime Foundation will hold its 5th Annual Family Boat Building event on Saturday, September 12, 2009, at the Foundation's Museum on Main Street in Mathews Courthouse. "If more time is needed to complete the boats, we'll finish on Sunday, September 13th," said Pete Hall, contact person for the event.

It is open to anyone who has the desire to build a boat with the help of a professional boat builder. Come, bring your family or a group of friends, and build a boat together in one to two days, and then take it home with you.

The event stresses interaction and cooperation among participating families and groups. It's not ten families building ten boats, but rather ten families seeing to it that ten boats get built. Family and group members develop a strong sense of pride in each other as they see the value of each person's contribution to getting the task done.

The boat we have chosen for our event this year is the Six-Hour Canoe. The canoe is the brainchild of Mike O'Brien, editor of "Boat Design Quarterly", from the publishers of Wooden Boat magazine. She is suitable as a personal boat. She is 15'3" in length with a beam of 31 1/2", and is constructed of 6mm marine grade occume 1088 plywood. She is light and easy to carry and handle, and is an ideal boat for an introduction to boat building.

The Six-Hour Canoe will be in kit form with all pieces and parts pre-cut and ready for assembly. The price of this kit is $375. Space is limited, so reserve your spot early by contacting Pete Hall at 804-693-9335 for full details of the event.

Designer Mike O'Brien has this to say about his canoe: "Nothing, absolutely nothing, conveys the joy of being afloat so purely as a light paddling boat."

The photographs above, from the book Building the Six-Hour Canoe, are used by permission of Tiller Publishing.

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