Watercraft

With regard to watercraft, rowing is propulsion, usually of a small boat, by forcing one or more oars mounted on the craft via rowlocks to push adjacent to the water. The purpose can be transport, leisure or sport.

The most familiar instances, called sculling, are those where one rower pulls on two oars, each a single straight piece mounted to an oarlock on the gunwhale of the boat, thereby moving the boat in the direction opposite that which the rower faces. A single oar per rower, called sweeping, multiple rowers (usually coordinated by a coxswain), articulated oars that make possible capable rowing in the direction the rower faces, maneuvers aimed at turning or at rowing in the opposite direction, and some combinations of these, are also well well-known aspects of rowing.

For the main case described above, keeping equal forces on the two oars, efficiently coordinating the application of vertical and horizontal force according to the point in the cycle of rowing, and muscular strength and stamina, are major aspects of effective rowing.

Pontoon

A pontoon is a flat-bottomed boat or the floats used to support an arrangement on water. It may be simply constructed from closed cylinders such as pipes or barrels or made-up of boxes from metal or concrete. These may be worn to support a simple platform, creating a raft. A raft supporting a house-like structure is single form of houseboat.

Pontoon boats usually run slower and are less likely to cause harm to themselves or other vessels, and are thus less luxurious to insure. As such, they are the most admired vessel style for rental operations. They also present the largest value in terms of capacity to price.

Longboat

His longboat should not be confused with a Long ship; or with a narrow boat. In the days of sailing ships, a vessel would take a number of boats for various uses. One would be a longboat, an open, mainly rowing boat with eight or ten oarsmen, two per spoil. In other words the longboat was double banked: its rowing benches were planned to accommodate two men. Unlike the vessel or the cutter, the longboat would have quite fine lines aft to permit its use in steep waves such as surf or wind against tide where need be.
It had the double-banked understanding in common with the cutter. This was possible as it had a beam alike to a cutter's but broader than that of a gig, which was solitary banked. The longboat was frequently more seaworthy than the cutter which had a fuller stern for such load-carrying work as laying out an anchor and cable. In a seaway or surf therefore, the cutter was more flat to broaching to.