I went out in a proper single yesterday. For those of you scrabbling for context, we’re talking about rowing. I’ve been out in a recreational single before, which while tricky to row in a straight line have the great advantage that one of the straight lines they don’t do is straight down. The single I tried last night, however, had no such natural propensity, so it was up to me to keep it stable. I was hampered in this by the fact that the boat was incorrectly rigged; it was set up so that during the recovery (when the oars are supposed to be out of the water) my port blade would dig in and try to flip me. Unfortunately I didn’t notice the incorrect rigging, just the effect. And as I expected to suck, it didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t necessarily entirely my fault. A passing single pointed out my problem, so I limped back to the dock and fixed it, but decided I’d tempted fate enough for one day.
To give you an idea of how tricky these things can be to balance, the one I used was probably around 24 feet long, and no more than a foot wide at the waterline. With your blades on the water acting as stabilizers it’s remarkably safe. Unfortunately you don’t go very fast in that position, and once you start waving the oars around it can all go horribly wrong.