A Dragonfly Rowing Shell

Carol Carlson

The Dragonfly has a length of 22' 4", a few feet shy of that of racing singles, but it is still capable of a good turn of speed.

When Bill Carlson decided to build a rowing shell, he had never sat in one, let alone tried to row one. But he had good shop skills: He’d already built an aluminum sailplane with a 56′ wingspan, a replica of a 1965 Cobra roadster, a MacKenzie River drift boat, and a strip-built kayak. And, now retired from a career as a manufacturing engineer in the medical industry, he had time to devote to building a shell and learning how to row it.His search for plans led to Steve Killing’s Dragonfly, a rowing shell that the designer describes as falling “between a hard-to-master racing shell and a much-too-sedate recreational shell.” Bill “liked the idea of the recreational shell, which would offer the rowing-shell experience but with a little more stability,” but the Dragonfly, with a waterline beam of 17″ and an elevated seat, would still be quite tiddly. Its stability, like that of a racing shell, would come from the sculls, quick reflexes, and, eventually, a well-refined sense of balance.