While I wait to carve the next oar I grabbed an older set and a newer version of my outrigger and brought them down to the dock for some testing on the medium size boat. It was blowing about 12 when we got there so I rowed upwind for 10 minutes and then sailed back then waited for the sun to go down and just did some calm wind changeover drills to look for hiccups in the system. This kind of stuff is super important to me because in so many ways your safety under sail depends on the little details of having everything operate smoothly and quickly. Practicing so you operate smoothly and quickly also helps.
These oars are a little oversized for the medium size boat but other than that I absolutely love how it rows. At 30” wide and 14‘8“ long, it’s nimble and effortless. The depth combined with the seat height and the outrigger height puts the oars in that perfect power spot coming straight back towards the breast bone while still giving me just the right amount of lap room for the recovery without tripping the oar. For shallower boats I would probably raise the oar pads a bit.
Turning around to change over from row to sail is just a little bit tiddly in rougher water but still doable I’m willing to live with the compromise for a boat that’s still narrow enough to solo with a canoe paddle. A canoe isn’t really the right shape for any serious rough water anyways so it’s all about using it in the conditions where it actually works best.
Trailing the oars while sailing allows for a quick steering although I generally ship them and just steer with the sail and body weight to get a little extra speed.
I’m getting closer to exactly what I want with all of this. Starting on prototype number three of the outrigger this afternoon, then hopefully oars again tomorrow.
One major hiccup is that my normal catamaran system interferes with mounting the outrigger so I’m going to have to come up with a different catamaran system for rowing canoes.
Thanks to everyone who wrote supportive things on my post yesterday. Hopefully I’ll get to a future when my building and boating adventures are measured in days again, instead of minutes. Until then…
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