ABOUT CANOE ROWING

Our Accessory Seat Rowing package with optional Hydrodynamic Stabilizers

Canoes make great rowboats! It's faster and less tiring than paddling and can be great exercise. Rowing a canoe will easily beat a rowboat powered by person of similar strength & skill. One rower can easily keep up with similar canoe powered by two paddlers. Plus, rower can turn on a dime!

The key to enjoyable canoe rowing is to get the canoe oarlocks far enough from your body to give you good leverage. Our rowing outriggers accomplish this by putting the oar pivot points beyond the gunwales of the canoe. Our canoe oarlocks clamp the oar tight -- no more oar slippage or rotation!

Our rowing outriggers provide pivot points for the oars that are the right distance from your body for proper leverage. They put the canoe oarlocks at rowboat width, while your canoe remains at sleek canoe width. You get best of both worlds! And once you have our canoe rowing attachment, you have some of the pieces that go inot our canoe sail rig, which will save you money if and when you get into canoe sailing!

Rowing vs. paddling

Rowing is more efficient than paddling so you go faster for a given effort. And it is a balanced stress on your body instead of a one-sided twisting stress so it's better exercise. Row from the center and you'll be able to turn on a dime and have a passenger at each end. It's a great way to fish, too.

Equipment you need to row

You need oars, oarlocks and sockets for the oarlocks. Canoes are narrow, so to get the right distance between the oarlock sockets, you need "rowing outriggers" -- arms that stick out from the sides of the canoe. Generally, you also will want an add-on seat so you can put it in the middle of the canoe for rowing. Finally you will need a crossbar or our accessory seat to attach the rowing outriggers to the canoe.

Top: Flat Blade Oars with Oarpins

Center: Crossbar with clamps shown below

Bottom Left and Right: Rowing outriggers shown snapped into crossbar

Versatility

The clamp-on crossbar at the heart of any of the rowing packages also receives other accessories we sell, such as the canoe sail kit, the canoe stabilizer pontoons and the canoe wheels. We even offer seats that take the place of the crossbar and accept wheels, stabilizers, leeboards, etc. and the rowing outriggers.

Portability and Convenience

All of our oars snap apart in the middle. Rowing outriggers snap in and out of crossbar and clamp to canoe gunwale. Crossbar, seat, mirrors, wheels -- all are designed for easy and quick installation and removal.

product_image

Left: Spring button part Center: Spring button part snapped into crossbar Right: Gunwale lamp on crossbar.

The crossbar clamps to your canoe gunwale, tightens securely with hand knobs.

Improved Rowing Outriggers

All rowing packages (except economy) now include our new adjustable rowing outriggers. This new design allows you to fine tune the location of your oar locks and gives complete adjustability for various canoe widths, so you can row from the middle where the canoe is wide, or from either end where it is narrow, or switch between your wide canoe and your narrow canoe without buying different equipment.

Flat Blade vs. Spoon Blade Oars

We have spoon-bladed oars, or flat-bladed (same as our sail kit steering oar). Spoon oars are more efficient (more propulsion from same effort). Flat are better if you plan to also use them for sailing. We have 7' or 7.5' lengths in the spoon-bladed oars. What length? Factors favoring longer: Canoe deeper than 15", light load, high seat, strong rower, performance-oriented rower, smooth water. Go faster and work harder with longer oars. Flat-bladed oars are approx. 7'.

Individual Rowing Components

If you are buying a rowing package, you may not need any of these things individually, but we have a lot of DIY customers, and customers who already own parts of the system because they started with a set of wheels, or a stabilizer, or a sail kit, so we also list individual components.

Details on the Rowing Components

(1) Oars with oarlocks. All oars are take-down type (come apart in middle). Oarlocks are clamping type, so oar won't slip out of position. 1/2" pin diameter.

(2) One Pair Rowing outriggers (brackets to get the oarlocks farther out from your body). All packages except the Economy include our improved Adjustable Rowing Outriggers (though not all pictures have been updated).

(3) Crossbar, with gunwale clamps, to attach the outriggers to your canoe.* One leg of each outrigger clamps onto the gunwales of your canoe. The other leg plugs into the end of the crossbar and locks in place with a spring button. There are two square tubes in a standard crossbar, so that the same crossbar can also accept our accessories such as the arms of the stabilizer floats. Specify crossbar length: 30", 36", 40", 46" or a custom length. Minimum length: For most canoes, measure width at widest point (outside to outside) and round up to nearest standard length. For Coleman, Pelican and a few others that only have a good runwale lip on the outside and little or no lip inside the cockpit add 4" before rounding up. All same price. Custom length available for $10 more (specify length in comments section when checking out).

(4) Stabilizer floats on telescoping arms (optional) to prevent tipping over. We offer 2 float options, "ethafoam" solid resilient foam (lighter, shorter, lower price) and "hydrodynamic" more streamlined, hollow plastic (a "must have" upgrade for sailing or motoring, great for rowing or paddling too).*

(5) Mirror (optional), so you can see where you're going when rowing backwards (backwards rowing is far more efficient use of your muscles).

*If you have our canoe stabilizer, then you have items 3 & 4 from the above list.