Rowing
A rowboat is a safer craft than a canoe, and rowing is not a difficult feat, but there is a difference between the rowing of a heavy flat-bottomed boat and rowing a light skiff or round-bottomed rowboat. In rowing properly one's body does most of the work and the strain comes more on the muscles of the back than on those of the arms.
In paddling you face the bow of the canoe; in rowing you are turned around and face the stern of your boat. In paddling you reach forward and draw your paddle back; in rowing you lean back and pull your oars forward. When beginning a stroke grasp the handles of your oars firmly near the ends, lean forward with arms outstretched and elbows straight, the oars slanting backward, and, by bearing down on the handles of the oars, lift the blades above the water. Then drop them in edgewise and pull, straightening your body, bending your elbows, and bringing your hands together one above the other. As you finish the stroke bear down on your oars to lift the blades out of the water again, turn your wrists to bring the flat of the blades almost parallel with the water but with the back edge lifted a little; then bend forward and, sweeping the oars backward, turning the edge down, plunge them in the water for another pull. Turning the wrists at the beginning of a stroke feathers the oar, the forward edge of which is sometimes allowed to skim lightly over the surface of the water as the oar is carried backward. In steering with the oars you pull hardest on the oar on the side opposite to the direction you wish to take. A little practise and all this comes easy enough.
The thing for a beginner to avoid is "catching a crab." That is, dipping the oars so lightly in the water as not to give sufficient hold, which will cause them, when pulled forward, to fly up and send the rower sprawling on her back. In dipping too deeply there is danger of losing an oar by the suction of the water. Experience will teach the proper depth for the stroke.
On some of the Adirondack lakes the round-bottomed rowboats are used almost exclusively, but the boat with a narrow, flat bottom is safer and is both light and easy to row. A cedar rowboat is the most desirable. The oars should be light for ordinary rowing yet strong enough to prevent their snapping above the blade in rough water.