Rowing

OK. You can’t row a narrowboat along the English canals, so I’m talking about The Dargon Harald Fairahair; and it sounds as if that is going to be difficult to row too!!

The Dragon will weigh somewhere around 80 tons. Most of the time she will be sailing, and the minimum crew under sail will be about 12 people, though there will often be more than this aboard. Nearer to shore, along rivers and estuaries we may well have to row the Dragon. There will be 25 oars along each side, with 2 rowers to each oar. This means a rowing crew of 100 people. How will this work? We don’t know yet, but hopefully sea trials this summer will help us learn how well we can row this ship.

One oar has been made and we have tried it in a smaller ship. The oar is about 7.5 metres long and it takes two rowers just to lift it.

The oars will go through holes cut in the third strake (plank) down from the top, and the oar holes will have wooden covers to keep them closed when the ship is sailing.

A few years ago the Sea Stallion, another large replica Viking ship sailed from Denmark to Ireland and back. They had to row too on some occasions. How did they find the rowing? Very hard, very heavy and very slow.

I have volunteered to help with the rowing.....not as a rower......I plan to be the old large man with the drum who beats out the rowing time. I think I can just about manage that!

I could also offer our narrowboat for them to practice their rowing, after all, it only weighs about 17 tons. There would be another problem though. Even though the narrowboat is only 2 metres wide, if you have 7.5 metres of oar sticking out on each side you would be wider than most canals and the oar blades would be in the trees and bushes.