Oars for a BRe

[Reg Barker]

I have been looking for a set of oars for my BRe. Criteria for a pair of oars would be splits thus enabling me to stow them neatly on the deck. If I had a BR20 it would not be a problem, but having the cubby they would stick out. I have been estimated for carbon splits, £600.00!! I'm certainly not paying a high price for a set of oars. I do realise that split wooden oars would be weak. So I wonder what other BRe owners have done. I thought about recessing into the cubby on each side so the shafts of the oars could slot in. Has anyone else got any ideas or can anyone advise me? On second thoughts: how many times would I have to use them? My boat hasn't seen the water yet since I brought it back from Cardigan. I hope to attend the Rutland meet.

Reg (BRe - Alice Amy)

[Royboy]

I am sure Matt had a set of splits at the London Boat Show - and indeed I think they are on his price list - he had them storing inside the lid of the port cockpit locker....

[Jonathan Stuart]

I'm going through the same thought process re BRe oars and that has become more pressing since committing to Sail Caledonia! Matt mentioned that he has some off the shelf wood splits where he has reinforced the joints with epoxy and he said they should do the job. It would be good to try those but I don't know how long they are and in my research I can't find any wood splits of a sensible length. I have rowed my BRe just the once with 8' oars and even though I knew that would be too short I was surprised by how lacking they were.

So far I haven't found any split oars available in the UK of a length and quality that I would be happy with. However, I have found the following article of interest which has given me one option:

http://www.solopublications.com/sailario.htm

So I contacted the person who wrote that and he said the oars were effective, with strong and tight joints. Those oars are intended for white water rafting but look as if they could be suitable, would surely be strong enough and come in up to 10' lengths that when split would (I think) fit in BRe cockpit lockers.

I have spoken to the UK importer of Carlisle products but they could only find the one piece oars on their price lists and have now lost interest. However, NRS in the US have been very helpful and their US $ price is less than the £ prices I was quoted for the items the importer could supply. Delivery is the issue, of course, although given the US $ pricing it is still cheaper to import than buy from the UK importer (if he could supply the split oars).

The cost would be about £240 to £270 (incl delivery to UK) for a pair of 2-piece 10' oars incl blades and sleeves. So for me that's an option but it's risk to buy unseen and I haven't found too many reviews for these oars, although I did read about a Wayfarer sailor using these to good effect.

[Reg Barker]

Thanks for that, Jonathan, but quite rightly I would not like to buy oars unseen.
The length from rowlocks to the inner body needs to be correct.  The ones supplied to a BR20 which I rowed on the Caledonian last year were too short - your arms were outside of the body therefore not getting maximum leverage.  I agree that length of oar would have to be 9-10ft, but past the rowlock I expect the stress on the oar would be at its greatest as it is pulled through the water.  Therefore I would be concerned the weakest point is the join if split, unless the diameter of the shaft is substantial, and then would be a weight and cost issue.  I have contacted a number of companies who make oars and they are reiterating what I assumed and what I have said. Two companies had experimented with splits many years ago and found it was not successful with wood. The smaller oars have been made. Aluminium (as per your white water oar) or even carbon fibre were suggested.
 I think I have talked myself out of the idea of split oars.  I remember when I used to skull with wooden oars in my younger days they would flex and now the modern material they use is carbon fibre in racing boats.  I will have to look at the idea I had of slotting them into the cubby, as I would prefer a wooden oar rather than have a metal oar. The boat is under a cover with a fair amount of snow on top therefore my idea will have to wait. If you come up with a better solution I look forward to hearing from you or anybody with a BRe.

[Jonathan Stuart]

I have looked at a number of formulas for oar length and based on the distance between rowlocks on the BRe the ideal length is between 11' and 11.5'. That is assuming no overlap between oars, because that is more of a hindrance with my level of rowing ability, and gives approx. 3:1 ratio between outboard and inboard length.

Of course, that is ideal and doesn't factor how they are stored.

There are another couple of options I have considered for storage. First, the Carlisle oars also come in one-piece shafts but with removable blades, so that removes a joint and may may them easier to manage/store but they are still aluminum. Alternatively, store the oars attached to the shrouds.

 But so far nothing has jumped out as the right solution.

[Helen and Chris]

As new BRe owners who are keen to come Raiding, we would be interested in hearing any updates to this topic in light of people's experiences rowing BRes at Sail Caledonia this year. 

Has anyone tried two-piece oars, either Matt's or a Carlisle pair?  What length of oars did you use and how did you find it?  Has anyone rowed with oars that overlap each other?

We have a pair of Matt's two-piece oars on trial but haven't had the opportunity yet to try them out.  They are 9'8" long and weigh in at a very hefty 3.7kg each.

Many thanks,
Helen.

BRe Skylark

[Peteri]

I had a Bay Raider prior to my BRe and so had a pair of Matts 2.7m oars.  I cut them into two and then drilled them, joining them with a piece of stainless steel pipe marketed on e-bay as exhaust pipe sections.  It was a fraction too large so I put some thin rubber mat around the half that remains permanently bolted to one half of the oar.  I thought I'd have to do this for the half that is removed but, when the bolts are tightened, there's no movement at all.
I was out at sea yesterday and, as the wind fell to zero, I assembled the oars and managed 1.5 knots.  The oars are just the right length.
I have replaced the rather small mast support with something similar but 1.3m long out of plywood and use that as the seat, it fits nicely.  Apart from providing a useful seat it also raises the mast off the hatch cover when down and makes a better position for the mast re visiblity when motoring.

[Jonathan Stuart]

Helen,

In the end I did buy a pair of 10' Carlisle oars plus 4X 1' extensions so I could get to 12' and try different lengths. With the import duty these became unexpectedly expensive but you only live once...

The Carlisle oars disproved the theory that you can't have nice 2-piece oars. The joints are nice and tight, etc, and work well. At their full 12' they give a far better rowing angle in the BRe than standard oars, i.e. the grips are coming to the upper stomach, and this is how we successfully used them at Caledonia. Depending on wind direction and strength - which has a significant when the BRe is rowed - and our tiredness we achieved between approx. 2.5 and 3.5 knots sculling. We didn't have time to practice side-by-side rowing although that would probably be worthwhile in a BRe.

However, 12' was over-geared and while we made a good pace it was very heavy rowing (especially to get over 3 knots). When I have time I want to experiment with removing the extensions and trying the oars in 10' and 11' lengths. The ideal will be something shorter than isn't so short that the handles are uncomfortably high. Others were rowing BRe at Caledonia with oars of around 9' (give or take 6") and with success although that brings the grips uncomfortably high for me.

Here is a pic of me with the 12' oars:

http://albums.phanfare.com/isolated/f1WpjQ01/1/6095724_6984265#imageID=188917717

And here is Sunbow III with 9' (?) oars:

http://albums.phanfare.com/isolated/f1WpjQ01/1/6095724_6984265#imageID=188917962

The other issue with the Carlisle oars is that the blades are heavy, and with that leverage when 9' out from the gunwale we needed 4kg (yes, that's correct!) of lead just inside of each handle to nicely balance the oars.

All of these thoughts are based on sculling without the oars overlapped and we had around 4" gap between the handles.

I still don't know what I think is the best oar length for me and I need to do some more trials. I suspect 9'-ish oars are fine for general use but if you are sculling in a raid and care about your performance then 10' to 11' will be much better. Swallow Boats supply the 10' 2-piece Osculati  oars. Anything longer than that gets expensive in 2-pieces and the only options I have found are the Carlisle oars or Xcell do a 2-piece 11' carbon oar.

[Julian Swindell]

Could you row a BRe standing up facing forward? Obviously not with the sail set, but it looks like the angles might be better when there is no sail at all. Has anyone tried? I have wondered about doing it with a single sweep on my BR20. Only the lack of a single sweep has stopped me trying.

[Reg Barker]

After talking to an oar manufacturer the correct size of oar would have been 12’ foot. But this would have to be custom made and expensive. As I was on the Caledonian raid I went for the cheap option of 10’foot oars without a rowlock stop. Also there would have been a stowage problem.

Rowing we found hard work.  There were three reasons for this:  the rowlocks were not in the right place, length of oar not correct, and we were two old codgers rowing against youngsters.

The oars are okay if needed for awkward situations.  I stowed the oars by placing the shafts through the rowlocks with the blades towards the stern tied to a cleat which keeps them out of the way.  In the future I may look for an alternative.

[Helen and Chris]

Thanks for all your comments.  We have now tried the oars Matt supplies.  They are awkward to use at first as they overlap slightly but once you get used to this it works quite well as your hands aren’t so far apart during the stroke.  We found the seat position quite awkward as well, but this was improved by sitting further away from the rowlocks and raising the sitting height by sitting on a flat fender.  The oars are quite heavy and need some balancing, we used 2kg strap-on ankle weights around the shafts as a temporary fix.

We tried rowing standing up, facing forward.  With one person using both oars it was necessary to bend down too much during the recovery, but it worked quite well with one person on each oar.

I think we would only use the oars during a raid as it wasn’t a pleasant enough experience to want to do it for fun!  I also don’t think you would be able to deploy the oars very quickly in an emergency.  We’ve got an old Canadian canoe paddle which we keep handy in the locker for that.

The real test will come next week on the English Raid.

[Rory C]

While waiting for my BRe to get to the top of the production queue, I wondered if there was any alternative to the standard solid wood jointed oars that appeared rather heavy when seen stored under the cockpit locker lid of the completed boat that I first saw.
I had a pair of small jointed oars left over from a cheap inflatable dinghy, long since expired, and thought they might work as the ends of some home-made tubular jointed aluminium alternatives. After a little research I purchased a pair of Collars plastic buttons (£6.12 + carriage) and from aluminiumwarehouse.co.uk   2500mm lengths of 16wg tubing, 1,3/4” , 1,5/8”,  1,1/2” and 1,3/8” available for about £45. (In fact I paid more than this because the first tubes I tried were far too thick so there was some coming and going – all part of the research!)
These tubes have nominal ODs and IDs which allowed me, after varied amounts of attention with emery tape, to insert the smallest into the next largest and so on to make a pair of 3m long jointed oars thinnest at either end. A key dimension is the 1.4m length of the cockpit locker in which the oar components are to be stored.
The 1,3/4” tube was cut into 2 so each oar has a main structural part 1250mm long that has to stand the greatest bending forces at the rowlock.
For the inboard end I slotted 250mm of each intermediate tube into each other with the smallest tube protruding a further 125mm to take the handle insert. The four wall thicknesses provide a measure of counter-balance to the longer outboard part of the oar. (I will regret not using more of the middle size tubes to increase the counter-balance if I - like others -  have to add weight to the handles later to make rowing easier).
I want to be able to use the dinghy oars as paddles when not raiding so I have only removed the middle joint and, for the time being, slotted the full length of both handle and blade parts inside the smallest aluminium tube. They are a loose a fit but sections of cycle inner tube stretched over their length make it a much tighter fit and enable me to clamp them into the split ends of the 1,3/8” tube with stainless jubilee clips. I may well find that I can adjust the overall oar length to suit the conditions by changing the amount of blade stem protruding.
I will certainly have to remove the blade to fit the outboard end of the oar into the cockpit locker. It remains to be seen whether I will have to remove the handle insert to get the inboard part of the oar into the locker.
The detachable outboard half of the oar slots into the largest tube with a 75 mm sleeve of the 1,5/8” over a 370mm length of the 1,1/2” tube. 800mm of 1,3/8” slots into it by 40mm. The blade stem slots into the split end of this and is clamped like the handle.
To stop the tube overlaps rotating during rowing I drilled and tapped them and inserted 6mm socket screws to lock them. I’m using the same technique to lock the 2 oar halves together. They are as tight a fit as are the tubes on our vacuum cleaner so I hope that the joint will transmit the load without deforming.
The two oar halves with handle and blade inserts pushed right in are each 3070mm long and weigh 2.3Kg.
The OD of the biggest tube is 0.5mm larger than the ID of the Collar button and I haven’t tried fitting it yet as I expect to have to warm the button up and slide it to the correct position with some lubricant. As yet I’m not sure what the best position will be. I have an old sculling boat oar that is 3m long and its button is 850mm from the handle end but with the BRe beam being 2000mm this dimension might make the handles far too far apart. The best position will, I hope, become clear when I first sit in the boat!
The component picture shows from top: Outboard half c/w blade, plastic button, inboard half c/w handle, inboard half, button, outboard half, dinghy oar assembled.
The proof of the pudding will be in the rowing trials and I am perhaps stupid to go ‘public’ before even trying them but I feel I owe it to all other contributors to the forum from whom I have learned so much already, to suggest this possible solution to the stowable oar issue.

[Graham W]

Here's an expensive alternative:  Xcell are now making a two-section version of these carbon oars http://www.xcelloars.com/products/X3-ocean.html with a length of up to 3.4m (11.2 ft). I think they are the ones mentioned by Reg in the first post on this thread.

The one piece oars are standard issue for trans-Atlantic rowers http://www.taliskerwhiskyatlanticchallenge.com/ so presumably can withstand a fair amount of abuse. Even in two sections they may be too long to stow on a BRe.

Off topic, the Talisker Challenge rowing boat 'Inspirational Friends' crewed by Hannah and Lauren is still out in the Atlantic on day 82, three weeks (at least) after everyone else has finished.  They suffered rudder failure and limped along waiting for a replacement to be delivered by the support boat, only to find that it didn't fit.  They are making the best progress that they can in waves up to 5m high.  Several other boats retired in similar circumstances.  Oh yes, they also had a fire onboard and were rolled, with one of them cutting her head quite badly. True grit or what?

[Tony]

Re:-Talisker Challenge.
"More people have been up Mt Everest than have rowed across the Atlantic Ocean"
 (Adam Rackley)
Phew! Now I know why!

Re:- Expensive option.

Expensive? You're not kidding, Graham. I've run cheaper cars!

However, if you are serious about raiding and can afford it (I'm not - and can't!) why NOT spend on something that is going to be a pleasure to use and will give the best return for the amount of horsepower you can generate?
You MAY not go any faster than someone using a pair of eighty quid mass-produced spruce jobs (I'm betting you do!) but at least you'll be able to row all day and enjoy it. (cf. Buying cheap hand tools.)

Storing oars inside the boat worries some people but if you need 12 foot oars that's what you should get!

I always keep my oars for "Four Sisters" (CBL) and "Wabi" (Deben Lugger Prototype) in the crutches with the blades fixed to the aft gunnels with a loop and Monkey's Fist button. They stay put, are not in the way of any sheets or crew and are ready for instant use.
E.g. Missed stays in a light wind? A quick stroke and you're through the wind.
Sailing very slowly against the tide? Add a bit of oar power.
 Approach to a mooring under sail going horribly wrong and the engine is still "up"? (Tut, tut !) Drop everything and row!
Mind you, with that kind of investment on show on my gunnels I'd think hard about how to keep them there in areas populated by the light fingered.
Don't think I'd be in a hurry to use them for poling off, either!

[PeterDT]

As i am now in the proces of fitting out my nearly new BRe, i wonder if getting a pair of oars is a priority. Reading the discussions on this forum (very usefull, thank you), i don't get the impression that rowing a BRe makes many people happy.
I think i will try to cope with poling for now, as we will be mostly sailing in the shallow waters of the Low Countries for now. Next step scullying?

Peter

http://www.wikswegen.nl/page/65/