Oars

[BlueLancer]

Yes I did say Oars, How do you work out how long they are supposed to be. Just bought a dinghy with no oars approx 9' by 4' made of frozen snot, has holes for rowlocks but nothing else to go on.

 

[Kelpie]

There was a thread on this recently. Some very complicated formulae being thrown around.
However I would go by: twice as much oar outside the boat as in. In other words, each oar should be 1.5x the distance between the rowlocks. Has worked fine for me.

 

[dunmor]

Yes I did say Oars, How do you work out how long they are supposed to be. Just bought a dinghy with no oars approx 9' by 4' made of frozen snot, has holes for rowlocks but nothing else to go on.

thought this might of turned into the sketch like four candles.!

 

[VicS]

The oars for my Mirror dinghy are 6'1". The Mirror is about 4'6" beam

The oars for my tender are 5'6". The tender is about 3'10" beam. The freeboard is of course less than that of the Mirror.

So a little less in both cases than the times 1.5 suggested above but both seem about right. I did try the Mirror oars for the tender but they were a little too long for my liking.

The dinghy oars BTW are two part inflatable dinghy oars. That makes them easy to stow and transport

 

[William_H]

In practice you will decide on oar length with practicalities like stowage in mind. Generally the longer the better and I really like the traditional wooden oars 6ft oars should be ideal with decent rowlocks. good luck olewill

 

[BlueLancer]

Thanks for all the advice, now got to find some locally.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

One thing to avoid is oars that only just pass each other amidships. It is very easy to trap fingers etc between them, and given the leverage on them, you can crush them badly. Either overlapping so you have to cross hands as you row, or with a gap of at least an inch between the ends of the oars.