Every rowing coach and club captain knows well that sickening ‘crunch’ sound that is unique to breaking carbon fibre. Soon after hearing it, a humbled crew will limp back to the dock with an oar or two ruined by a collision with another boat or the local landmark.
Broken oars can be very expensive to replace if you have newer sets, and impossible to replace if the oars were older. The odd oars are now destined to gather dust at the back of the boathouse or simply be thrown away.
However, this is about to change.
As a boatman and trophy oar painter, Jonny Cantwell often saw these dusty oars and regularly heard club captains lament the waste. This prompted him to wonder if there was a way to match up these odd oars, and an idea was born.
A new free service is now available to all clubs that can help match up these oars with others across the country so that usable pairs can be made. This can be helpful for all levels of racing, from elite right through to beginner, as there is bound to be someone with a similar or just waiting for your match to come along.
FindOar provides a way to list the odd oars you have or post a ‘wanted’ listing for oars that you’d like to find, functioning as an online oar matching service.
Getting more oars back on the water can save clubs valuable funds and means less waste. Saving money and the environment at the same time is obviously a winning plan.
The website and database – put together by rower Benjamin Sherry – provide comprehensive details to help you correctly identify your oars, then allow you to list the individual details in a searchable database. Once you’ve found your ‘match’, all you need to do is contact the other person and work out an arrangement.
Cantwell also wants to prevent damaged oars from being thrown away. He has partnered with a startup carbon fibre recycling business that is using a new process to extract longer fibres instead of simply grinding them up. The business will collect broken oars that can no longer be used for recycling.
He will also accept donations of oars that clubs do not want to store and look for a match.
At the moment, the service is only a few months old, but it is hoped that as the word spreads and more clubs dig out their dusty oars, it can become a great aid for all rowers.
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