In defence of carbon oars

Charles Colvin and John Longley of the Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club in Perth, Australia, are not on this forum but have emailed me the following in favour of adopting carbon oars.

It has to be said that they are operating their oars at gearings around 2.2, which is much much lower than any other St Ayles club I know of, and standard length carbon oars would cause clashes if used with our current gearings of 2.7 to 3.

This is Charles:

"Our experience with carbon fibre oars is that they are excellent for our purposes and a delight to row with. Ours are cleaver oars acquired from a school rowing shed.
Dimensions are very similar to our wooden oars maybe a little shorter. Different shaped blades of course.Handle length can be changed to suit the different geometry of the different rowing positions Gearing (adjustable by moving buttons on sleeves) set the same as wooden oars. 2.1: 1 - 2.3:1
With conventional gates they have revolutionised our rowing experience in the skiffs. Children 8 & 9 have used them. Complete rowing novices use them. Experienced oarsmen love them.
They are slightly more difficult to row with in large waves, but that can be overcome by further lowering of hands on the "going forward" part of the stroke. We don't feather, but we could.
They take all variability out of the oar issue and rowing success is totally dependent on the skill and technique of the rower, which is as it should be.
Carbon fibre oars could be easily fabricated by amateur boat builders. However there's no need because they're so readily available as cast offs from rowing clubs.
We vote strongly in favour of standardising on carbon fibre oars"

This is John:

"I concur with Charle's summation.

This week we hit 50 people rowing our two skiffs mid week in two time slots 0600 to 0700 and then 0700 to 0800 over three mornings.
Our numbers continue to grow strongly. I am confident that if we had not moved to light, easy to use carbon oars we would not have experienced this phenomenal take up by our members.
I also think that the hardest part of building the skiffs was making good oars.
Much easier to knock on the door of a well healed rowing club and ask for their cast offs.
You can still use old style wooden oars etc. in championship events if that is the will of the Class but for everyday, easy, fun rowing carbon is the go,"