Arksen X Klepper
The original folding kayak, reimagined
A boat that fits in two bags, goes together in the time it takes to boil a kettle, and has twice crossed the Atlantic. Built by hand in Rosenheim since 1907. Reimagined with Arksen, and available nowhere else.
A boat that came down the Isar
An architecture student called Alfred Heurich spent three weeks building a boat that came apart into bags, took it on the train up to Bad Tölz and put it back together on the gravel at the water's edge.
A kayak and the ocean
There are few kayaks in the world that have the same pedigree, and none the history. These kayaks are proven beyond all doubt.
1928
Franz Romer
Navigated from Lisbon towards the Caribbean in a 21ft 6in Klepper, including 58 unbroken days at sea between the Canaries and St Thomas. The first known ocean crossing by kayak.
1956
Hannes Lindemann
Paddled from Las Palmas to St Martin, 72 days, in an Aerius II lifted straight out of the catalogue. Not a special build. A boat anyone could buy.
1984
Arved Fuchs and Rainer Neuber
Rounded Cape Horn in winter, in Kleppers, and made it the first successful winter rounding of the Horn in a production folding boat. Fuchs wrote the book about it and then went on to both poles.
1992
Eric Stiller and Tony Brown
Sydney to Darwin, four thousand miles up the length of Australia in a Klepper double, including the first unescorted kayak crossing of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
The beginning of a great adventure
The beginning of a great adventure
We made the voyage to explore the destination, and the Klepper is the only boat we have found that answers all the questions that may be asked of it. Paddle it, sail it, for an hour or a month at a time. Everything on it exists for a reason: the frame is that shape because that is the shape that works; the skin is stretched because tension is what makes the hull stiff; the sponsons are there because air is the lightest buoyancy anyone has invented.
Two companies who build that way, seventy years and several hundred miles apart, turn out to want the same things. Our communities have been quietly overlapping for years.
Hand-built in Rosenheim
The Arksen Klepper
Not a colourway, not a badge, not a trim level of something that already exists. A folding expedition boat developed from the ground up by the two companies, and sold nowhere but here.
The brief was narrow on purpose: keep every part of a Klepper that makes people love Kleppers, and bring to it the expertise Arksen has in fabrics and engineering.
Frame
Klepper's snap-lock architecture, in service since 1954, with a revised fit at the joints so it goes together with more certainty and fewer decisions. Specify it in wood, mountain ash and marine ply cut and finished by hand, or in the carbon developed for the Marlin. The wooden frame is the boat as Rosenheim has always built it. The carbon frame takes weight out of the bag you carry to the water.
Skin
A new fabric: the same principle of a tensioned hull over a sprung frame, in a cloth chosen for abrasion, cold and ultraviolet rather than for the catalogue. It scuffs on ice and shingle instead of tearing.
Buoyancy
Reprofiled air chambers, tuned to set hull tension and load the waterline where an expedition boat is actually loaded: heavy, and for days at a time.
Deck
Lower in profile, fittings recessed so nothing snags a line or a dry bag, in the materials and colourway that run through the rest of the Arksen fleet.
Launch
Specified for a mothership as well as a shore: integrated lifting and lashing points, with rig, spray deck and expedition options drawn alongside the hull rather than added afterwards.
Lifecycle
Repairable in the field and supported in the long term, with spares held for the life of the boat. Kleppers that are fifty years old are still on the water. That is the standard.
10 Minutes to Open Water
Exclusive to Arksen
“For more than a century we have built boats for people who fully intend to go somewhere in them. Arksen arrived with a clear brief and a real understanding of how a Klepper is used, which is rarer than it sounds. The Arksen Klepper is a genuinely new design, and it is unmistakably a Klepper, built by the same hands to the same standard. It is the boat we would have wanted to make.”
Register your interest
The Arksen Klepper is presented publicly for the first time at the Monaco Yacht Show, Port Hercule, 23 to 26 September 2026.
Register now and we will come back to you with specification, frame options and pricing as they are confirmed.
Enquire about the Arksen Klepper
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