Kayak vs. Thames Rowing Skiff - a personal experience

@ Sailor Don - It might be interesting to note the experiences noted by Jill Fredston in her book Rowing to Latitude.

Jill had been a rower all her life; a recreational rower in her youth then competitively in H.S. and through college. Ultimately she and her husband Doug Fesler completed a number of long, unsupported expeditions to very high latitudes.

Doug was a long time kayaker. He preferred to see where he was going. Jill preferred the efficiency of sliding seat rowing. Although Jill's boat was substantially heavier and carried the bulk of the supplies, she was faster in spite of Doug's greater strength.

Both of their boats were selected and customized for long distance open water expedition use. After many years and tens of thousands of miles Doug became a rower.

Two boats, one a kayak the other a sliding seat rower, developed and customized over a long period of time for long use in exactly the same conditions. The rower proved consistently, if only slightly, faster. The kayak was much lighter and easier to portage or to drag across long stretches of ice.

As always YMMV.

 

I would agree with those conclusions.
The benefit of seeing where you are going and light weight of a kayak is nice.
Information like this is hard to find. Thank you for posting.
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Don,

Didn't you say you do fixed seat rowing?
If so, some of the benefits of leg usage will be missing.

Another comment is that rowing vs kayaking will be using somewhat different muscles, at least in my experience, which would be even more different with sliding seat. If your goal is exercise, you might want to have a choice.

 

Perhaps I didn't mention the fixed seat rowing, but I did mention the benchmark of a Selway-Fisher Mandarin 17.


Definitely a fixed seat design.
I have a rowing exercise machine with a sliding seat. I have to lock the seat when doing rowing exercise because of a bad knee joint.
With my Mandarin 17, the seat is fixed.

For someone with good knees, a modification to a drop-in sliding seat with outrigger assembly shouldn't be too difficult, but it certainly is not in my future.

If I go with the Heritage 18 design from Little River Marine, I will have to row with the sliding seat in the locked position.
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Pity about the knee, is a bionic one in your future?
I have more and more friends/ relatives with them.
One guy had both knees replaced at the same time.
2 months later he is back out in his canoe fishing on the coast, just like normal.

I can tell you prefer rowing, but without the sliding seat I guess a kayak would be about equivalent (assuming a good one). But you definitely probably need the Dave Gentry type.

I have a lady friend who waited to do her knees until she almost couldn't walk. unfortunately that caused so much atrophy that she is having a really difficult time with the recovery. Much longer than typical - and more painful.

Good luck.

 

The geometry will be wrong. If you're not going to use the slide it would make more sense to set the boat up for fixed seat. No point swinging three metre long oars through the wrong angles.

 

I have talked to the guys at Little River Marine (builder of the Heritage 18) and they say their sliding seat rowing skiff can be rowed with the sliding seat locked. The swept angle of the oars will be approximately the same. The lost leg motion will be substituted by the back bending (breaking) motion of a typical fixed seat design.

BTW, the Heritage 18 can use 9 foot oars, instead of 3 meter oars more commonly used with sliding seat design.
I am currently using 8 foot oars on my Mandarin 17. When conditions get rough, I switch to 7' 6" oars to keep the blades up out of the wave tops on the glide stroke. In calm, flat water conditions, I feel that 8' 6" oars would work better for me on my Mandarin 17. But I'm not competing, so I stay with the 8 footers.

 

After all your medical information, my knee has miraculously healed.

 

Yeah well, they're trying to sell you a boat.

The angles wont remain the same. Sliding seat boats have the rowlocks set up a far way further back than a fixed seat boat, for the obvious reason that at the catch you slide a fair way further back. Slide lengths are usually around 20", and you wont make up that much extra unless you are swinging your back around to insane angles. The extra stroke length is also the reason for the longer oars, not surprisingly.

Sure, you can row a slider with the seat fixed. It's a common way of introducing beginners to sculls. It's just not anywhere near optimal. Your call though.

If you actually want one of their boats I'd be taking it out for a few miles in less than perfect conditions and seeing how you like it. If you like it and can afford it and think the weight is acceptable, go for it. OTOH, a Ruth would be half the weight and only cost a few hundred bucks, and could be set up for fixed seat rowing.

 

I was looking for the world speed record in an olypic class rowing shell vs. a kayak, but could not find the numbers, but I did find something that is perhaps more of interest here.

the fastest crossing of the English channel by sea kayak is 2 hr 28 min. the fastest by a single rower is 3 hours 14 min, and the fastest by a rowing team (male) is 2 hours 41 min.

all of these are olympic type racing hulls, which are not really suitable for open water, but this is an open water test in real conditions. That being said, wind and surface conditions will make a large difference on such a crossing, but the small differance in time indicates that all of these methods of driving a narrow hull forward are roughly equivalent. The single kayaker has the advantage here, but likely it is just a matter of time or luck that some team, or single rower will match or beat that sometime in the future, when conditions are ideal.

Both of these types of hulls would be optimized for speed. In all cases I would say the kayaker/rower(s) would be in excellent condition and all I am sure are fine athaletes, so again these would be roughly equivalent paddler/rowers to comare type of boat.

I think perhaps what it comes down to, is which type of boat do you perfer. a kayak is a simple boat, easy to transport and carry, you can see where you are going and was designed for open water use. a row boat for similar conditions would be much larger, but also have more capacity, not as easy to transport or move around on land.

But based on the Crossing Records of the English channel, there does not appear to be any inherent advantage of one over the other. I was actually suprised the single kayaker actually crossed faster than a 4 man rowing team. this might be an annoly of weather, conditions or even super human skills on the part of the kayaker, but the difference is only 14 min.

 

World's Best Times for rowing events over a 2000m course are available
for a variety of classes here:
http://www.worldrowing.com/events/statistics/

There is probably something similar for olympic kayaking somewhere.

Of course, there are many non-olympic races over a wide variety of
distances and conditions, so it might not be easy to find meaningful
comparisons of rowing and kayaking.

 

I don't know what good a 20" slide length is going to do if you can't load your knee joint like an Olympic sculler.
This is a recreational sport for me, not a contest of speed.

My current setup is 8 foot oars, 36" stroke at the grips, 50" between rowlock pivots, 25" from leather collar to end of oar handle. The boat travels about 16 feet per stroke in calm water (no wind). This is the benchmark. It is not my goal to exceed this benchmark. Just to get a rowing skiff of equivalent (or better) performance that I can load on a roof rack by myself. That means 90 pounds maximum.
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What I meant was that since you won't be using the slide, you won't the get the same length of stroke, even if you do use your back through a greater angle than sliders do.

 

Its kind of pointless to tell him he won't get something he never had, never planned on, and can't use.

 

Not if you are saying it as part of pointing out that rowing a slider with the seat fixed is not optimal for geometry, which is what I was doing. In other words, my opinion is that if you want to row fixed seat, it's better to have a boat which is set up for fixed seat.