First Steps to Rowing a Small Dinghy

Start at the Harbour Wall, Not in Open Water

Pick a day with light wind and slack water, and choose a sheltered spot — a harbour wall, a pontoonalongside a slipway, or a quiet mooring in an estuary. A small dinghy is the ideal classroom because it responds instantly to everything you do, which is exactly why it teaches you so quickly. Before you step in, put on your buoyancy aid, check the weather forecast and the tide times, and tell someone on shore where you are going and when you expect to be back.

Leave the dinghy tied on to a ring, a cleat or a set of harbour steps. Sit in it while it is still secure. Feel how it moves under you, how it dips when you shift a knee, how it settles when you sit still. Ten minutes of this is worth an hour of being told about it. Have a bailer, a sponge and a length of painter line within reach, and keep your phone in a dry bag rather than your pocket.

Find Your Balance Before You Find Your Power

You will be sitting on the centre seat — the thwart — facing the stern, which means you look at where you have been rather than where you are going. Turn your head to check your course, and accept this from the start: your view is the wake, and the harbour wall is behind your shoulder.

• Sit on the centreline, feet flat on the floorboards or braced lightly against a stretcher, knees slightly apart.
• Keep your weight low and central. If you need to reach for something, bend at the waist and keep your hips over the seat.
• Do not grip the gunwales. Clutching the sides makes you rigid and stops the boat moving naturally beneath you.
• Move with the boat, not against it. Small, unhurried adjustments keep you dry; sudden lunges do not.

If you are rowing with someone else, agree who moves first. Two people shifting at once in a nine-foot dinghy is how people end up swimming.

How to Hold the Oars Properly

The oar has three parts worth knowing: the handle, the loom (the long shaft) and the blade. Rest the loom in the rowlock — the crutch or the rowlock gate, depending on your boat — and let the rowlock do the work of carrying the oar. Your hands only guide it.

Hold each handle with your palm underneath and your thumb resting over the end, hands roughly shoulder-width apart. Keep your wrists relaxed. Vertical blades, or "square" blades, are best when you are learning, because they grip the water predictably. Do not grip the rowlocks, do not let the blades dive deep, and do not twist the handles until you can feel what a clean stroke does. Firm hands, loose shoulders, straight back.

Short Strokes First — Always

Beginners instinctively take enormous, splashy strokes. Resist it. A short stroke, roughly half to three-quarters of your reach, keeps the boat level and gives you time to think between movements.

• Push, don't pull. Drive the handle away from you with the flat of the blade holding water. Pulling feels natural and wastes most of your effort.
• Keep the blade submerged but not buried. If water climbs the loom, you are digging too deep.
• Recover just above the surface. Skim the blades back, level or slightly feathered, so they do not catch the water on the return.
• Aim for rhythm, not distance. Count twenty short strokes without a wobble, then stop and let the boat glide.

Twenty tidy strokes will move you further than fifty frantic ones, and you will still be dry at the end of them.

Turning Without Panic

To turn, row with one oar only on the side opposite the direction you want the bow to go, or hold one blade still in the water as a brake while rowing gently with the other. To spin in a tight space, back down on one oar — push the handle towards the blade instead of away — while rowing forward with the other.

Practise this around a mooring buoy before you go anywhere. Approach it, circle it, stop beside it, then set off again. Stopping is a skill in itself: let the blades trail flat on the water to slow down, and let the boat lose way rather than grabbing at the wall with your hands.

Your First Trip Away From the Wall

Untie the painter, coil it clear of your feet, and row ten or twenty metres out. Turn, look, come back. Repeat until leaving the wall no longer feels like a decision.

Always leave yourself an escape route. Head upwind and uptide of where you want to finish, so the wind and current help you home rather than fight you. Keep the harbour wall within easy reach for your first few outings, and remember that a light breeze will move a dinghy sideways surprisingly quickly.

When you return, come alongside slowly and fend off with your hand, never with an oar — an oar against stone will snap or throw you off balance. Step out only when the boat is tied, one hand on the wall, weight low. Then do it all again tomorrow. Every confident rower you have ever watched started exactly where you are: sitting on a thwart, tied to a harbour wall, learning what a short, quiet stroke feels like.