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Great story about a friend. I think it was at the beginning of Lodore, but I'm not sure.
A group put on, wasn't paying attention, and flipped on the only rock in the first couple of miles of flatwater.
My buddy (Jim) launches, puts his wife on the oars, and sets up a camp chair on top of the cooler. He has his drink in hand and is messing around with a new camera as they approach the aforementioned rock. The wife (only her 2nd time at the oars, ever) starts yelling at him to look, she thinks there's a raft flipped up ahead. He says, "Naw, that's impossible. It's only flatwater" and continues to mess with the camera. As they come closer, she realizes that it certainly is a flipped raft and goes to pull into the eddy behind the rock and help pick up the pieces.
She bumps up against the rock, the chair teeters and flies overboard with Jim, drink, and camera. The camera strap miraculously wraps around the oar and Jim's wrist gets tangled in the oar tether. Unfortunately bumping the rock knocked them away from the eddy and she now has to really push to make it in. Each time she dips the oar in, it dunks Jim back underwater and each time she pulls up, it pulls him out of the water and smacks his face on the wrapped camera. After many strokes, dunks, whacks, and river drowned shouts, they make the eddy and recover, but don't speak till the next day (don't worry, they now love telling the story). In the end: the flipped group got a good laugh and recovered their stuff, the chair was lost, the camera never got wet but was broken by the numerous impacts with Jim's head, and most importantly, the drink was saved. Needless to say, they learned their lesson: they now always tether the chair to the raft with a single cam strap so they don't lose it.
I know the connection to the oar tether was a little weak but it's a great story, nonetheless.
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"The world would be a better place if everyone kayaked."-Brad Ludden (Valhalla)
"You only get one chance to run a drop blind."-DD
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but I'd also like to give my wife and daughter a little help when they are at the wheel. It is an NRS frame so I can see the point about the oar locks width. I went with the 10' oars since that came with the package but the more I use them I do think 9'ers might be a better fit for my rig. I went ahead and got the Cataract counter balances to give them a try and although I haven't had them on the water yet, when I fit them up the proper balance point still seems a bit off so that's why I can now see how the 9'ers might be better in the long run. We'll see how it goes. This is more of a fishing rig than hardcore whitewater craft so I'm not too concerned about losing an oar overboard. Just want to make all that backrowing for perfect drifts a bit easier 
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