What is the better rig?

[Steven M-M]

Perhaps these images will help illustrate my earlier post. The second one is my "goal." The last one is for me too far, and where I set the frontstops. If I hit the frontstops I know I've shoved my butt too far forward of my shoulders:

IMAGE_00010.jpg (69.9 KiB) Viewed 6582 times

IMAGE_00011.jpg (68.66 KiB) Viewed 6582 times

IMAGE_00012.jpg (107.03 KiB) Viewed 6582 times

[Stelph]

Also to build on what boston_1x is saying, when tweaking the rig try and make sure you're always aware of what catch angle you are getting, before doing too many drastic changes try and measure where 65 degrees is (see below where this is calculated as the best arc, it says up to 70 but unless you're amazingly flexible and 6ft 5 plus I would aim for 65)

http://www.biorow.com/RBN_en_2011_files ... News04.pdf

A good way of making sure you know what the arc is, outside of having rowing telemetry, is to try and set marks for where that angle is, two ways I've seen is either use wire attached to the front stay/front wing that is bent at 90 degrees and goes vertical at the point of 65 degrees so the blade/your hand hits it when you reach that point, or with a bow rigger attached to the top nut that's bent horizontally out and the down at the 65 degrees mark so again you hit it when you are at that angle

When you know what that angle is and if you find you can't reach it the you can start tweaking with foot positions/spans etc to try and get to a point where you can

[petermech]

Normally I do go for arc length. However I just look at the height of the person and also of them rowing and adjust from what I see. I do not have that spread range in the riggers I use that is given in the last chart. I can not go that narrow. So with shorter rowers I would go with a shorter inboard and wider spread then the numbers in the last chart. I adjust the outboard to get the load I want at first by how strong I think the rower is and then by the stroke rate the rower is able to do, doing the best I can with the equipment I have. I will have about the same inboard for rowers of about the same height but I would adjust the outboard for the strength the rower. So with what I do the person height is not fixed to oar length.
I don't think Taylste is as tall as I would use for a person using 161 spread.

[taylste]

Thanks for all the great advice. As I am in Ottawa, I am not even thinking about rowing until later April. Short season for us. I will rig far into the stern with a fairly light load and a reasonable inboard. I also like a fairly low and flat footstop to account for my long shins and inflexible achilles (working on that:).

[Steven M-M]

I find there is a comfort zone in the rowing stroke, and if you get outside it, your effectiveness suffers. I’m 5’8”, so my ability to easily get a long reach is limited. By my guestimation (based on marks on the stern), I normally get about 60 degrees of catch angle, maybe a little more at higher rating. I know a little more would be better, at least 65, so last spring I tried once again shortening inboard and outboard and moving my shoes to the stern. After two weeks of it never feeling right and splits noticeably slower (although my measurement wasn’t systematic), I went back to my old rig (Crokers, 86/285.5, spread 158.6). I decided to focus on making sure that I was taking full advantage of what catch angle I could comfortably achieve. I worked on covering the blade quickly and being patient with the power application. With this I found a little more speed (although speed is relative in my case). So many of us less-skillful rowers use the top quarter or more to cover the blade that we waste whatever catch angle we struggle to achieve.

[fatboy]

What sort of hull are you in... more specifically, can you adjust both the rigger and footboard position?

Side note: All the club boats at Cambridge are rigged w/ 160 spread, and the club oars for 1x are generally 287:88. That's the happy medium for about 200 masters scullers. I'd suggest starting with that, and keeping it there for awhile, while you get your catch angle and lateral trim/balance figured out. Then simply tweek the outboard so you feel like you are effective and can hit target rates in the last half of a hard workout or race.

Just a passing question, how many club singles does Cambridge need to run to service that ~200 masters scullers membership? Thanks

[boston_1x]

There are just under 200 boats stored at CBC. About 40 are club boats... and I would guess that about 2/3 are singles... so 2 dozen(?) We try to have 3-4 hulls in weight ranges from 125lbs to 220lbs. The rest of the fleet is 99% private singles.