A one year intensive course on Traditional Boat Building was started and originally run by Sarah Powell. This involved building a Cornish working boat traditionally from lofting to launching. The Marine School and National Maritime Museum Cornwall entered a unique partnership to combine their knowledge and resources to enable the traditional skills of the area to be recognised and built upon for the future.

Around twenty students are engaged on the courses from all backgrounds and age groups and many progress into employment within the boat building industry.

During the first year two open decked scaled down luggers of around twenty feet were built and completed within the course time and are now sailing for all to enjoy. Here you can see one of them, the completed Silver Harvest.

In 2004 the Happy Return took part in the course and students came aboard and experienced traditionally sailing an original Mounts Bay dipping lugger. Happy Return and the Association have now become part of the syllabus for future courses. There is an interesting series of pictures of the students "dipping the lug" on the Happy Return on this page Dipping The Lug!

The students made the sweeps for the Happy Return and members of the Association are seen here officially receiving them.

Verity and Veracity were the two luggers from the 2006 course and the detail can be seen here.