From a biomechanical perspective - Rowing with a rigger or sliding seat has a lot of muscle groups involved.  In calm conditions a trained rower has a measured efficiency of 22%.  That compares with 26% for a trained cyclists.  So aerobically, in calm conditions, the pedals deliver slightly higher biomechanical efficiency.  However in anaerobic conditions the rower can do better because there are a lot of muscles involved and all can be pushed into the anaerobic state.  That means the rower will be able to work at a slightly higher power level over 5 to 10 minutes.  From there the cyclist will do better.  My boats  are about the same speed over 2000m as a rowing shell with equivalently trained pilots.

From a propulsion perspective - Paddles matched to the boat and power output of the rower will have slightly less efficiency than a similarly matched propeller drive.

When conditions get a little choppy rowing tends to drop efficiency because the motion of the oar is more difficult to control.  With pedalling it is a matter of just rolling legs over up to the point where the prop begins ventilating.

With the first iteration of the pedal drive on the 8T catamaran to test the concept, one cyclist could match what two rowers could achieve.  There is a brief note at the beginning of this video with regard to the pedal drives in their final configuration:

You can see they are pulling away from lighter rowed boats.

Fundamentally the prop drive will have a slight advantage over rowing.  On the other hand a rowing system can be simpler  to engineer to get reliability.  The boats that chose pedal drives this year left it quite late to set up systems.  None of them are what I regard as reliable.  I have supplied standard folding props, which are a bit small for the size of boats they are pushing.  

Rick

 

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