Affordable recreational sculls

[yazoo]

Erg 3 or 4 times a week but I've wanted an "on the water experience for years and finally had my chance now that I live on the finger lakes NY. So what to get, I needed something I could row as much of the year as possible, something durable as it will live outside and something stable. Boats are horribly expensive which I guess explains why so many folks kayak, a new rec scull (maas, Little River Alden) are $4k to 6k so I looked at used boats. Adirondack rowing have a bunch and they seem nice but I would prefer new. So paddle boards with a strap on unit is what I bought. $2500 got me the board ($800) unit ($1200) and oars ($525). Started out late in the summer and got the hang of it but now I know a bit about rowing this was the dumb option. It rows like you are towing a barge, it stops after every stroke and you sit too high up so nothing is in the right place. it was great for the first couple of goes but it got frustrating really quickly.
Sold the unit, kept the board and oars, my Wife loves the board and paddled a lot at the end of the summer.
Had a go in a couple of boats, a used maas airo which was nice but had a lot of damage to it and an eden ts515 which I bought. it rows so much faster than the board, feels like it goes as fast as the airo and it has outrigger floats to stop it flipping. I paid $1800 for it and although it's had a lot of use (6 year old) it looks new. Polyethylene so it is unbreakable but light. New these boats are $2400, I bought two hatch covers (lost over the winter) from the distributor Virginia Rowing down in Norfolk Va,

Anybody else have one of these great boats, can you use a stroke coach with them?

are there any other rowers on the finger lakes, I've yet to see anyone out except kayakers and canoes.

[jackarabit]

Indestructible by comparison with glass composites. There's a similar rotomold knockabout single from Row1 in Australia. No US distributor.

[yazoo]

Indestructable by comparison to most things, I dropped mine putting it on the car, it bounced. I heard about the Race 1 boat, it didn't have very good reviews in Australia, something to do with it flexing a lot, not rowed one so can't say for certain. This Edon TS515 is very stiff and it tracks well. My only complaint is that you can put the oars in facing the wrong way but I was told that's operator error and nothing to do with the manufacturer

[frankieboy]

We now have some Edons at the club and they are well liked by the recreational scullers. Our novice sculling coach says that they are the best money the club has ever spent. The US agent is http://www.virginiarowing.com and they were helpful in every way, I think we paid $2400 for each of them.