My two main boats, both skegged, load completely opposite of each other to handle best. But why is due to the hull design - one has a quite loose bow and is officially oversized for me (Romany), the other is properly sized for me but has a very tight bow albeit still a disposition to weathercock. I need to put a bit more weight in the stern of the second to help the skeg to get better grip. In the Romany I bias some weight at the nose to tame it, unless in surf.
I have paddled out on a morning here or there where I was deficient in caffeine and got it backwards. In the second one, sized properly for me, it can have some noticeable and really not desirable results.
I can see the idea of altering loading if you are out there and conditions rise so that there is a control advantage to be gained by messing with the balance a lot. But it seems like that is going to be a pretty rare event.
One other mention about ruddered boats. I would NEVER buy a ruddered boat that the whole foot rest moves up and down. The gas peddle design is the ONLY choice you should EVER get if getting a boat with rudder. If the whole foot rest moves you get no support for say rolling. Super BAD design.
Having owned an HM for a while, I’d say that’s one of the best modifications you could make to it. There were conditions where I simply couldn’t get it to turn, no matter how hard I edged it. The worst was when paddling backward. I did find that the balance of the boat was precise enough that if it started to lee-cock, I could correct it by leaning forward and if it started to weathercock, leaning back would neutralize it. However, it tracked like a freight train, which was often a pain. I would classify it as a good “learning boat”, since it definitely provides an education in boat handling.
The other mod that makes a world of difference is to cut out the high-mounted seat and lower it down onto the hull (I know that the high seat is designed to provide maneuverability with the boat loaded, but I never paddled it that way). The improvement in stability with the lowered seat is dramatic! My boat instantly went from “be careful, as you never know what it will do” to “utterly relaxing” to paddle. I loved paddling it waves because it handled them so well. These days, I have a Pintail for that, which has a whole different set of quirks.
I owned a Betsy Bay Aral, which was a very nice handling boat, with no real need for a skeg. However, I’ve come to appreciate boats that can be easily trimmed to suit the conditions, and that generally requires a skeg (I’m rudder-phobic).
On one of my skin-on-frame boats, I rigged a sliding weight that I could position anywhere between the back of the cockpit and ~16" forward of the stern tip, using a looped cord in the cockpit. You’d be amazed how much of an effect even a 1# weight can have on the trim of a boat when you move it far aft. Unfortunately, you can’t easily do that in a boat with bulkheads.
Another idea that I haven’t actually tried yet is “air skegs”. Considering that wetherhelm is caused predominantly by wind, it seems somewhat odd that we’ve chosen to correct it using something in the water. An “air skeg” system would consist of one blade/sail mounted on the deck near the end of the bow and (perhaps) another at the stern, depending on the inherent weatherhelm characteristics of the boat. Raise the air skeg at the bow to correct weathercocking (by increasing the surface area exposed to the wind), or the one at the stern to correct leecocking. I have no idea of exactly what size or configuration would be required, but could be a fun experiment. It would have the added benefit that you’d never have to worry about it getting jammed with sand or gravel.
OK, I think you’re getting a bit carried away here. I’m talking about adding something with an area of perhaps 1 square foot, not a large sail. It’s strictly for trim in the wind, not propulsion.
Wouldn’t you need a centerboard to prevent sideways drift? And wouldn’t you lose storage space in both bow and stern (assuming that these air skegs retract into slots in the deck)?
Sideways drift is not really a problem. This already happens when you are paddling in sidewind, and you can easily correct for it by aiming the kayak some degrees upwind, relative to the target. (Most people will not even discover that they have drifted - they will just keep paddling towards their target, effectively paddling along an arc instead of paddling in a straight line. But they will reach their target anyway.)
The problem, which a skeg (or bnystrom’s suggestion) is intended to correct, is the situation where you can’t aim the kayak in the direction you want without a lot of additional effort, because the wind keeps pushing the bow or stern to the side.
Seems as though you could do the “air skegs” as little folding masts with triangular sails. Control with lines, maybe sprung to keep it down or up as desired. Attach the whole assembly with glue. Would that work?
I once tried blowing up a large paddlefloat and placing it on the bow of a kayak with weathercocking tendency. The area was perhaps 3/4 of a square foot. It didn’t help much. Perhaps the round shape of the paddlefloat was too aerodynamic for the intended purpose.
Yep, it’s a slow time on the board…
A little bit makes a difference. I was heading home in an Arctic Tern when a squall came through and I had a spinning rod sticking up on the foredeck. I couldn’t turn upwind until I got it down and secured. which wasn’t easy in a storm.
My buddy was in an empty carbon Epic and she was also.struggling
The good was that there was a good bar at the takeout…
That’s one reason I like the gps, point and go - you follow a bearing, not a heading. Your track will show a straight line between the 2 points, not an arc.
Now, granted, an experienced paddler can fairly accurately estimate the wind, waves, and current affecting your bearing, but the gps just makes it so easy.
Even if they were retracted into slots (just one possibility), the space at the extreme ends of most sea kayaks is not particularly usable. perhaps you can jam some tent poles in the, but what else?
Well, it is one reason I like transits. No batteries required, only your eyes. But of course it requires another object, which you can line up with your target.
I don’t want to get in the way of innovation: by all means give it a go and let us know how it works. But, and I’m speaking as someone who is definitely not a naval architect, it seems to me that cocking of any sort is caused by pressure differentials in the water. Your solution is to create an offsetting pressure differential in the air. So technically, you are not addressing the cause of the problem, but rather the symptom. Will that work? Again, I look forward to your results.
No, it is an effect of an imbalance between the sideways forces from the wind and the resulting sideways reaction forces in the water.
So you can attack the problem from both sides: Change the centre point of the wind forces or change the centre point of the water forces, until they are in the same place.
In case my explanation didn’t make sense, we can look at a picture of an actual weathercock (from Wikimedia, so I assume that linking is okay): Weather cock
Aida [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Here we have intentional weathercocking. The attack point of the wind forces is very much at the rear end of the cock because of the large tail. The pivot point is placed very far toward the front. As a result wind pushes more behind the pivot point than in front of it, and the cock turns up against the wind.
If we want to stop the weathercocking of this weathercock, we can do it in two ways:
We can move the pivot point backward, so it is aligned with the attack point of the wind. Now the weathercock will be neutral to the wind.
We can move the attack point of the wind forward, so it is aligned with the pivot point. This can be done by either adding more area at the front or removing area at the rear. This will also make the weathercock neutral to the wind.
In either case, if we compensate too much, the weathercock will start leecocking instead: Turn its tail against the wind.
The principle is exactly the same for the kayak, except that we don’t have a well defined pivot point. Instead, we have some sideways resistance in the water at the front and at the rear, and together they will form an attack point somewhere around the middle, which we can consider our pivot point*.
If the attack point of the wind forces is behind this pivot point, the kayak will weathercock. If the attack point of the wind forces is in front of the pivot point, the kayak will leecock.
When we use the skeg in a kayak, we use method 1 above: We move the pivot point further toward the back. But there is actually nothing which prevents us from using method 2: Moving the attack point of the wind further toward the front by adding more wind area in the front.
(*: It is not a perfect pivot point, because there will also be some sideways slip. It should also be noted that the pivot point is speed dependent: When the kayak is at speed, the pivot point will be more towards the front.)
