After this morning’s appallingly early 5am rowing test (to catch the right light for video) I think I have the info I need to start on the next generation of outriggers and oars.
I’m finding that with the outrigger mounted conveniently at the rear seat hanging block location the boat hunts just a bit. I could push it back 2 more inches without violating the quarter sheet of plywood dimension but what I really need is more like 4 inches. (There’s a special place in hell for boat plan designers that specify plywood parts at 25 or 49 inches, and I’m not going there.) I could add a separate set of mounting blocks specifically for the outrigger instead of sharing the seat blocks holes, but that would impinge upon my absolute simplicity principle. I’m sure my obsession with this seems a bit ridiculous but in my experience if you give any quarter to complexity it spreads like a cancer that eventually covers your entire boat with doodads and geegaws.
I think a better approach is just to change the shape of the boat. I’ve been building my canoes asymmetrically for the last year but I think the next batch is going to be symmetrical because I really doubt that it matters for the canoe paddling performance, and it would sink the tail just perfectly for the tracking that I want in rowing mode without having to move the rower aft.
The other reason not to move the rig back is because it would shorten the available space to fold the oars into and I really like to be able to tuck the oars without having to unship them. At these canoe lengths, I have a possible oar length of 7 feet on the larger boat and 6 foot 9 on the smaller. 6’9” is getting a bit small but I think I will appreciate the compactness. It’s important to me that things stay sparse enough so I can still paddle it comfortably with a canoe paddle without feeling frustrated by the rowing clutter.
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