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Sculling, Page 2

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Having discussed the technique of sculling in the previous issue (SB #45), let's look at the various oars you can use.

The simplest way to get a sculling oar for a small boar is to modify the biggest rowing oar you can find. An oar 10 to 12 feet long -- 2 or 3:feet longer than that used for rowing -- works for most small boat applications. Err on the long side; it's easier to make this shorter.

The blade should be long, 4 feet or so, flattened on the bottom and diamond shaped on the top. I made mine from an old lifeboat oar; leaving the blade alone and thinning and shortening the shaft. Some flexibility seems to be fine, as does some bending (Fig.1). An oar that bends down to the water increases the blade's angle to the water, thereby generating more thrust.

While a regular oar can be used for sculling, specialized sculling oars are easier to use and make the stroke less tiring. They virtually reverse themselves, so less wrist rotation is required. In comparison to conventional rowing oars, sculling oars have long looms, a blade-heavy balance, and bigger blades with long leading edges. Most specialized oars are designed for the horizontal stroke. Gunning oars, Bahamian oars, and yulohs are three main types.

Gunning & Bahamian Oars

Gunning oars (Fig.2) are the shortest and lightest, as they are designed to move the smallest boats. In New England, they were used in scull floats -- low-sided, mostly decked boats in which gunners quietly sculled down on flocks of ducks. The oar worked through a tight hole in the stem, offset to the left so a right-hander could scull across his body while lying on his back with his head propped on the transom. The gunning stroke is short and done at a high rate with the blade at a shallow angle relative to the water's surface.

The most common gunning oar is a bent-bladed oar about 8 feet long with the tip 6 inches or so out of line with the shaft axis. The blade is thin, with an asymmetric section, flat side down, convex side up. This is the same section found in a straight gunning oar, which has an extremely long, thin blade, narrower at the tip than at the shoulder. By curving the top of the blade, less wrist twist is needed in the stroke. Steering these floats with a curved sculling oar was a problem. The hook in the oar made it hard to use as a rudder, while the tight hole made it difficult to scull only on one side. Boat and oar builder Douglas Martin reports that the gunners in New Hampshire's Piscataqua River estuary solved the problem by carving a kickup or flipped up tip to the downward curving oar. This apparently made little difference to sculling effectiveness but made the oar a better rudder when turned on its side.

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