newbie needs help with oar locks

[fledgling]

Hi all. I just got a used raft and frame set up. The frame is a custom welded pipe set up with the oar towers welded in. The Carlisle oars have closed oar locks attached between the blade and the oar stop. These just slip into the oar tower and off you go. This is the way it came setup. Should I teather these to the boat some how incase the whole thing pops out? I was looking at the NRS website and all the oar locks they sell are open. Why is this? Is my setup stupid? I was a little surprised at the complexity of some of the setups and the different accessories on the NRS website.

[mania]

your setup might be bad if you dropped an oar and it hit a rock then the oar would have to break instead of popping out the oarlock.

a split ring will usually keep the oarlock in the tower.

good luck.