Lessons learned from rowing

Earlier this month, I had the Utility at the lake, and was bringing it back to the dock. Just for fun, I shut the motor off and used a canoe paddle. I found the boat surprisingly easy to maneuver this way.

Of course, the water was calm and there was no wind that day. 

Nonetheless, I was intrigued. A few days later, I decided to finally buy a set of oars & try my hand at actually rowing. 

The Glen-L Utility has a fairly wide beam for it's length, so in theory it would benefit from rather long oars (like 8 feet or longer). I bought a set of 6-1/2' wooden oars, because that is the longest oar that can be easily stowed onboard. Yesterday, I got to try them out.

So, "How does it row?"

Unfortunately, I can't give a fair answer to that question... not yet, anyway. I need to change a couple of things before I can give it a fair assessment. 

I will say that you can indeed move a Glen-L Utility through the water with a set of oars with relative ease. It is not, however, what you would call a "rowboat." Someone in a canoe could easily run circles around it.

That's okay. I wanted a power boat that I could also row occasionally. This boat fits that description quite well. 

But, I ran into a problem. 

Back when I installed the oarlocks, I used a set of Perko edge mount oarlock sockets. Due to the sharp inward angle of the hull along the sheer line, I installed the sockets on the inner surface of the sheer. I did this for two reasons:

1. I didn't want to risk driving the vertical screws through the side of the hull.
2. The 90° angle of the mount would not make contact with the hull if mounted on the outside.

Installing the Perko edge mount oarlock sockets.

The 90° angle of the base seemed better suited to the inwale.

The unfortunate result of this, as I found, is that the oar must be used at a rather shallow angle when rowing. Otherwise, it will easily hit the side of the boat. This becomes a real problem when you need to get the oar deeper in the water, because the sharper angle causes the oar to get knocked right out of the oarlock. This happened multiple times, and was extremely frustrating.

This is why you don't want to install an oarlock socket on the inside of the sheer.

That's not the boat's, fault. It's mine, for installing the oarlock socket on the inside of the sheer. So, until I decide on a way to fix the problem, I don't think I can give a fair assessment of rowing a Utility. But otherwise... so far, so good.