The Cataracts in the retail stores, dont have the counter balance weighted handles. If you call Cat... they will sell you a pair. They also have slide on counter weights. If you drill a hole and add your own, you void the warranty. Counter balancing weighs more. I think wood oars may be the lightest you can find. Either way, it will take more effort.

Don Hill use to sell a CV joint style oar lock, but the mfg stopped making them and Hill doesnt list them on his site.

It appears there are some new blades Im not familiar with, so I can only speak to the blades from Cat.. that float. Whatever oar you get, you want the floating blades. Otherwise, you will get punched in the face with the end of your oar, eventually. It sounds like the blade that Todd has. At the time, I bought them at Sportco and the blades were separate, so you could pick either style. If you dont have them, get the short version of the oar-rites and leave the rubber blade protector on the blade.



Its possible that some folks have extra weight because they bought too long an oar. When I began to look, no one had a math equation to arrive at the correct length. The closest I heard about was to measure the distance between the oar locks X by 3 and divide by 2. I did that, but I also rounded up to the next size. A friend bought the same size oar for his willy, (wider than mine) based on Willys recommendation and I thought his oars were a little short. The equation would have required at least another 6 inches for each oar. Due to the angle of the oar to get the blade submerged the handles were above my shoulders. A longer oar will not require such drastic movement. You also maximize the leverage on the boat, but only to a point.