Strap-on kayak skeg sea trials

I took the kayak to the public boat launch ramp at the Berkeley marina's south basin. It was windy enough that the windsurfers were out, it was hard to make any headway to windward, and the waves were big enough to bury the boat's bow a couple of times.

The skeg worked the way I hoped it would, rather than the way I expected it to. Tracking was greatly improved, but not so much that the boat was painfully hard to turn. After about an hour and a half in the water I pulled the boat out and found that the skeg still seemed to be exactly where I had put it; I had thought that it would get pushed out of alignment after a while.

The next step is to try a shallow-draft skeg that would work when the boat is launched from a beach.

Strap-on skeg

The strap-on skeg is meant to be a temporary means of improving the kayak's tracking.

It probably ought to be shorter and wider, but the shape was dictated by birch plywood scraps that I had. It has two pieces of 1/8" braided rope that pass thru the skeg and that have a loop tied at each end. The loops hook onto a pair of shock cords that are held on the deck with nylon straps. I don't yet know if this will work at all when the boat's in the water and under way.

The skeg in place

The skeg's bottom plate is coated with Goop to make a rubbery, sticky surface that won't slide. The tip is coated with Goop because it's more durable that the oil finish on the rest of the skeg. Goop was also used to fill various nooks and crannies and to glue the rope into place.

Once I've got this working (or when I just give up on it) I'm going to start making a waterproofed-nylon spray skirt.

(December 2012: this skeg is too deep to use in most conditions.  I've been making a much smaller strap-on skeg for another kayak, and it seems to work fine.  My current kayak has a rudder that I use as a drop skeg when it's windy.)