Apparatus for rowing in the direction the rower is facing has a base frame. A main bearing for a lever with hand grip and another for a lever with oar are in the base frame. A linkage connects the lever with hand grip and lever with oar to form a counteracting four-bar linkage system. The oar lever is the driven arm of the four-bar linkage and is linked to a rotary drive that has a main axle and virtually coaxial actuator rod. The hand grip lever rotates about its axis and is mounted to a bearing body within the base frame. The hand grip lever actuates an actuator that is virtually coaxial to the main axle on the bearing body. The actuator engages with a seesaw mounted on the base frame to shift the actuator rod of the rotary drive to rotate the oar.