Wooden Boatbuilding & River Running
Program Overview
This microcredential short course is offered in partnership with Fretwater Boatworks, the iconic wooden-boatbuilding shop based in Flagstaff, Arizona, run by Prescott College alum Brad Dimock, that specializes in building beautiful wooden boats, including Grand Canyon dories and McKenzie River dories. This course begins with a 1-week session in Fretwater’s boatshop building two 9’ open one-person McKenziacs. This will be followed by a 3-day river trip on the San Juan River.
Wooden Boat Building
During this portion of the course, you will gain the knowledge and skills to build your own McKenzie River dory, her larger cousin the Grand Canyon Dory, or any number of other similar craft. You’ll learn lofting, scarfing, fabricating parts, free-form assembly, and outfitting, as well as many of the arcane arts you’ll use along the way. You’ll use a minimum of fancy tools, relying more on adaptation and improvisation, as well as learn about maintenance, storage, and repair.
Wooden Boat River Running
Then you will take your boats … to the river! In addition to learning (or if you are already a River Rat) refining your river expeditionary and camping skills, you will learn how to navigate and row these beautiful wooden crafts in Class I and II whitewater over the course of a 3-day river trip on the San Juan River from Sand Island to Mexican Hat.
Key Program Information
Enrollment
At this time, enrollment is exclusive to Prescott College students.
Fees
$1,379
$999 for the first 5 students who register
Instructor
Brad Dimock and Fretwater Boatworks
Location
Fretwater Boatworks Workshop (Flagstaff, AZ)
and San Juan River
When
March 5-15
(March 5-11 in Flagstaff, AZ and March 12-15 on the San Juan River)
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More Details
Participants will be able to:
- Replicate the technical skills necessary for building wooden dories, including lofting, scarfing, fabricating parts, and free-form assembly.
- Identify the foundational components of wooden boat building, maintenance, and repair.
- Demonstrate rowing techniques and expeditionary practices for wooden dories in Class I and II water over the course of a San Juan River trip.
Brad Dimock
Fretwater Boatworks
“I grew up in Ellis Hollow, a valley east of Ithaca New York, wandering in the woods, playing in the sandbox, careening on the rope swing, annoying the cats, and paddling my small blue plastic boat in circles until I became too heavy to float.
I fled west to Prescott College in Arizona and immediately ended up on a Grand Canyon river trip. That was 1971. Now look what’s happened.
After another college river trip in ’72 I went to work as a river guide in ’73. First motor trips, then rowing, then, in 1978, rowing dories for Martin Litton. For several winters I worked internationally running psycho rivers in Chile, Africa, the Yukon, and the Guatemalan borderlands.
Twenty years of rowing dories put the tweak on me. I was doing a lot of repair and rebuilding, and finally began building them from scratch.
I put river running on the back burner for a while around the turn of the millennium and wrote river history books. The research was really a blast, but the writing was way too much like work. I segued back to full-time guiding. (But if you’re one of those early hominids that still “reads books” you can find them at fretwater.com)
In 2008, after decades of having nowhere to build large objects, I built Fretwater Boatworks. I retired from river guiding in 2024 and now spend most of my time boatbuilding, teaching, and puttering.”
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