Since 1972, The Apprenticeshop has been dedicated to inspiring personal growth through craftsmanship, community and traditions of the sea. Located on the waterfront in Rockland Maine, the Apprenticeshop offers programing for youth and adults that ranges from 2 hours to 2 years. Students of all ages come here from around the world to learn traditional boat building skills, sailing and maritime arts. Inspired by the philosophy of experiential educator Kurt Hahn, and his own experiences in education and Outward Bound, Lance Lee started the original Apprenticeshop in 1972 within the complex of the Maine Maritime Museum, in Bath, Maine. Lee felt, as Hahn did, that education should encourage both thought and action simultaneously, not one or the other. Today, as a non-profit organization, the Apprenticeshop is recognized as one of the finest and oldest traditional boat building schools in the country.
From the beginning, the structure of the Apprenticeshop was built around craftsmanship, seamanship and community. Craftsmanship developed as apprentices worked alongside a master builder and one another to learn the traditional methods of wooden boatbuilding. Seamanship was practiced as apprentices sailed vessels built by the shop in their off time, and the shop itself was built and maintained by the apprentice community. the program became a catalyst for the revival of traditional wooden boatbuilding in a time when the craft and a way of learning essential to individual education and cooperative experiences were deemed to be extinct.
The shop moved from Bath to Rockport in 1982 and, a decade later, moved again to an historic lumber mill in Nobleboro and became part of the newly formed Atlantic Challenge Foundation. The lack of easy access to the water prompted the move to the Rockland waterfront in 1995. In 1999, the shop moved to it’s present location on two and a half acres of waterfront in Rockland’s north end.
The Apprenticeshop
643 Main Street, Rockland, Maine 04841
Phone: 207-594-1800