WoodenBoat Magazine Review

Reprinted from WoodenBoat Magazine, February 1999

The Frontrower – Forward-facing rowing, and more
Reviewed by Peter H. Spectre

I came to take the advertisements for the Frontrower seriously when I was rowing down a river, facing where we had been, and Eileen, who was sitting in the sternsheets, facing where we were going, said, "Is that a nudist beach up ahead?" or something like that, and I twisted my head around too quickly for my age and came close to permanently misaligning the vertebrae in my neck. Suddenly, a system that allowed me to row while seeing what my passenger saw had – how should we say? – a certain appeal.

Not that I had never rowed facing forward before then. I had done my share of push-rowing, where you face in the direction you want to go and push, rather than pull, on the oars. It worked reasonably well as a change of pace, but I couldn't really get my back into the stroke for real power. I had also tried Bow-Facing Oars, the articulated rig patented in the late 19th century and still made by Calhoun Boat Works in Tiptonville, Tennessee, that allowed me to face forward while pulling on the oars in the standard fashion. I found that to be reasonably powerful and effective, but awkward and confusing when maneuvering in tight quarters. The Frontrower sounded different.

"You row facing forward," the ads for the Frontrower said, "so you can see where you are going." They also said that you could row with just your arms, or with just your legs, or with one arm and both legs, or with both arms and one leg, or with an arm and a leg; that you could put more effort into your stroke; that you could go faster than conventional sliding-seat systems; that the lifting and dipping of the oars, as well as the feathering, were automatic; and that – here was the clincher – "You sit in a big, comfortable seat with a backrest." Now, there's something new in the pleasure-rowing game.

So when Ron Rantilla, the inventor of the Frontrower, said he had a couple of boats with his rig installed and would let me give them a trial run if I wanted, I said sure, why not? I was intrigued by anything that would allow me to see where I was going, go faster than I ever had in a rowboat, and sit in a comfortable chair while doing it. I was also intrigued by a device that could work with leg power alone, because I knew a fellow – Brother Rick Curry, a Jesuit who had founded the National Theater Workshop of the Handicapped – who had always wanted to row yet couldn't because he had only one arm. I invited Brother Rick to the trial.

We launched the boats, a canoe and a light pulling boat, in the harbor at Belfast, Maine. Both were fitted with the Frontrower, a strange-looking drop-in device with pulleys, lines, levers, springs, footpedals, and – yes – a comfortable-looking adjustable seat. The business end was a pair of aluminum oars joined at what would normally be the grips to a pedestal in front of the rower. The actual grips were about a foot from the inboard end of the oars. Because the shafts of the oars didn't pivot on the gunwales, or even touch them, there were no oarlocks or anything like them.

Frankly, it looked like a contraption, a Rube Goldbergian apparatus, that shouldn't work because it lacked even a shred of conventionality. Who ever heard of rowing without locks or pins on the gunwale, or of oars that pivoted on their ends?

Conventional or not, the Frontrower worked, and then some. Brother Rick got into one of the boats, and after a minute or two of instruction set off for open water. I would rather say "rowed off," but somehow that doesn't seem to be the right way to explain what he did. He pushed forward on the pedals with his feet; the oars blades automatically entered the water at the proper angle and propelled the boat forward. He relieved the pressure on the pedals; the oar blades automatically came out of the water, feathered themselves, and took up position for the next stroke.

I've seen numerous first-timers try to get the hang of rowing, and it's not a pretty sight. A lot of thrashing; a lot of splashing. Directional control? Not much. But Brother Rick, the gent who hadn't rowed a lick in his life, slid right out of there. Yes, there was some initial awkwardness, but it was minor, and some difficulty in getting the boat to point in the right direction, but that was minor; too. In a matter of minutes, Brother Rick was cruising in the outer harbor as if he had been an oarsman for years. When he finally came back, a big grin on his face, he said, "Where's Ron? I want to shake that man's hand!"

My experience with the Frontrower was just as positive, though becoming one with the machine took longer. That's because I first had to unlearn most of what I knew about rowing. My greatest difficulty was coming alongside a float – how to back down? when to pivot on the outboard oar and how? what about the float side oar?– but, facing forward, at least I could see what I had to do.

Almost as difficult was accepting the fact that much of the technique of rowing is handled automatically by the Frontrower; it took a while to learn not to fight the machine.

Easiest was adapting to the stroke. Arms only, legs only – within a few minutes I was moving right along, as smooth as silk. Putting the arms and legs together – pushing on the pedals while pulling on the oars – the sensation was somewhat like riding one of those recumbent bicycles while rowing at the same time. The speed, and the sensation of speed, was remarkable, similar to that of a sliding-seat rig. In fact, it was better, because the rower's body doesn't slide backward and forward in the boat. Rather, the body remains stationary, thus there is no "checking" of momentum during the recovery phase of the stroke. (Later, on the shore, Ron Rantilla described how in 1996 he entered the 22-mile Blackburn Challenge in a Alden Ocean Shell fitted with a Frontrower, beat the entire fleet of conventionally rowed sliding-seaters, and broke the course record. I suspect the Frontrowers clean recovery provided a good deal of the advantage.)

Since the Frontrower is a self-contained drop-in unit, the easiest boat to use it in is a canoe, as there is all that empty space amidships. Using it in most rowboats would require removing the center thwart. As most center thwarts are structural members, cross-bracing might have to be added forward and aft to take up the slack.

Basically, the Frontrower seems best for sport and exercise, not for skylarking along the waterfront. For the latter, you would be better served with oars and oarlocks, or a single paddle. It's also primarily for a solo workout, because the rower is always amidships: balancing the weight of a passenger would require either another passenger or ballast.

I don't see the Frontrower particularly as competition for traditional oarlocks, any more than the above-mentioned Calhoun's Bow-Facing Oars have been for the last century or so. Neither do I see it as a Rube Goldbergian gimmick. It's a first-class rig, ingeniously put together, for serious rowers. Even better to my mind, it is ideal for the handicapped, whether rowing for fun or to win races.

How ideal? Not long after Brother Rick Curry learned to row, he ordered a Frontrower for the waterfront program of the National Theater Workshop of the Handicapped. As a result, next summer a lot more people who never rowed before will be rowing. Which is all the more reason to shake Ron Rantilla's hand.