Nice explanation, Allan!
I think the air skeg is a brilliant idea. Please design mine so it doesn’t retract into the deck unless it has a drain of sorts so water wouldn’t pool there.
“air skegs”…no thanks. I spend more time reducing deck wind induced forces. Plus what do you do when the wind isn’t constant and gusts come from a different direction? Add a rudder to your vertical stabilizer? Naw we don’t have the speed and horse power to make that aircraft/sail boat stuff work.
OK - I’m new to kayaking and it’s off-season for me, but I’ve been eye-balling skegs for a while now without an opportunity to try one yet - the question that keeps coming to my mind is why do kayaks not use dagger-boards like small sailboats (Sunfish, Laser, etc.).
Please be kind to my inexperience kayaking, but if we’ve digressed to air skegs I figured I could ask about dagger-boards… 
I ain’t no expert but I think a daggerboard is to lock the entire boat into the water so the sail can push the boat forward… that is…wind coming from an angle pushes the boat sideways and the daggerboard and rudder/tiller convert the sideways force to forward motion. The purpose of a skeg is to lock the stern of the boat to the water (to varying degrees) so the boat doesn’t weathercock so much… so the stern doesn’t get blown downwind.
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In my minimal looking at daggerboards it seems that they could possibly help with weathercocking but since you would be using them in the exact conditions where a kayak design is at home and would be eliminating the kayak’s ability to roll, edge or retain you center of gravity as the shape of the water under you keeps changing it seems that you would be giving up most of the positive aspects of a kayak to eliminate a small problem while adding weight.
Sailboats also have rudders…
Yes, they do - the rudders are used for turning and the dagger-boards are for tracking.
A retractable skeg is used for increasing the lateral resistance of the stern, so you move the centre point of the total lateral resistance further towards the stern. This way you can balance the centre point of the lateral resistance so it is in the same place as the centre point of the lateral wind forces.
As far as I can see, a daggerboard is placed under the centre of the boat, so by lowering it you will just increase the lateral resistance, but you will not be able to move its centre point towards either end.
Edit:
Or in other words: Look at the illustration of a weathercock earlier in the thread. A daggerboard would be equal to replacing the pivot point with a stronger bearing. But that would not remove the weathercock’s tendency to weathercock.
Wow this topic went a wild. Air Skegs LOL. Get a rudder on boat designs that don’t turn well without one. What kind of boat is that? Take a look at a Epic 18x. long water line almost zero rocker. You can lean that boat but it still wont turn very well. But lean a rockered boat like a Valley Gemini SP and it turns quite quickly. that’s pretty much it.
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danstanfield, the typical kayak skeg is easy to adjust, which is key to its functionality in windy weather. I think it might be a bit harder to come up with a good mechanism to adjust the depth of a daggerboard.
The other advantage of a kayak skeg (which operates like a centerboard rather than a daggerboard) is that if you hit bottom with it it will just get pushed harmlessly up instead of getting damaged or damaging the kayak.
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The rudder and the skeg Compensate for both the design flaws and lack of paddler knowledge. INMHO
That and some design flaws may not be flaws at all but actually tradeoffs in the characteristics.
Volume, speed, stability, weight, rolling…… So many factors that get balanced differently to meet the usage needs of all the different people doing different things. Different balance for different people doing different things.
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One thing I can add… I have read comments to the effect that ‘a skeg doesn’t turn your boat’. I have found that, yes, I CAN and DO use my skeg to turn my boat if it’s windy out. It’s simple… want to turn into the wind? Just raise the skeg. Want to turn downwind? Drop the skeg all the way. Just trim it when you’re on the desired course.
For a sea kayak, I prefer a boat with decent rocker and a skeg. The combo has worked very well for me; no complaints. I didn’t like how the rudder on my first kayak swung to and fro uselessly when I was on top of a powerboat wake wave, nor did I ever like the sliding foot pegs.
But I’ll soon be getting used to paddlng a different kind of hull and one that requires a rudder. Namely, a surf ski. Can’t really edge something that doesn’t have the required contact between thigh and boat.
I will probably miss all the body ballet kinds of things done in a SINK, but I immediately loved the seating and leg position of the ski. At least its rudder has a gas-pedal style footbrace and the rudder itself is mounted much farther forward instead of at the very end of the stern as is done with sea kayaks. The location is similar to that of a skeg.
People need to think about using the wind as a tool for turning when possible, like Rex indicates. It is a heck of a lot easier than using a device, just sit there and let Ma Nature take care of the issue.
I am old enough to be a big fan of less work.
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I’m the guy that retrofits side-skegs on kayaks that don’t have a skeg box. That’s actually my favorite option because I can dial in the amount of weather, lee or neutral helm by deploying the skeg by different amounts, as Rex said. But there’s no skeg box to consume space inside my rear hatch, plus everything is external so no skeg cable or rope to jam up where you can’t get at it. It does add hardware to my rear deck that some might find objectionable.
The majority of my kayaking is right off of the beach on the Atlantic coast. I find myself personally characterizing a hull based on its performance without using a skeg/rudder.
But I think it’s nice to have something available. Based on my experience with both use and maintenance, I prefer a rudder.
Pretty much just like a person moving their rudder back and forth wondering why it isn’t working, I have experienced kayakers many times moving their skeg up and down, wondering why it isn’t working. I’ve checked for people to make sure their skeg was down, as they weren’t quite sure and they wished their hull was behaving a little differently. I’ve twice had someone pry the cable slider out and pull a little bent loop of cable out to the side, ruining the cable, trying to get the skeg to “work”. These things are a matter of experience and understanding. A skeg or rudder won’t provide an absolute elimination of your hull being unevenly pushed around by wind and waves, a rudder can only provide directional corrections while moving through the water, and when your stern is repeatedly in the air off of the top of waves, you’re going to require some course corrections using either. If you steady your feet / take your hand off of the skeg adjuster (and yes, these seem developmentally the equivalent of one another) you may eventually find yourself concentrating on using your paddle to help harness the power of the waves, and settling into your rides. This silly…thing…the rudder cranking about in the air thing, that is so often used as a nod towards skegs, seems as though it occurs in situations where a rudder really shines.
None of this is to suggest one or the other is better for you. It’s just my observations and experience so far with the skeg/rudder thing. There is certainly an added aspect of coordination when using a fixed footboard rudder pedal setup. (I’ll take the liberty of not assuming a rudder user in a performance sea kayak is required to use a sliding foot peg setup. These rudder setups seem to have come equipped otherwise for over a decade, and are easily modified.)
Oh, I realized WHY the rudder did not work on that boat wake—after the initial surprise. It took me a moment to figure it out because I had just taken up sea kayaking. I was able to control the boat using paddle strokes and keep going. But given how I had hated the sliding pedals right from the first time, none of the subsequent sea kayaks I bought was ruddered. The rudder didn’t do anything I could not do with edging and/or paddle. The skeg was nice to have at times but I actually did not use it much.
Lest a certain diehard rudder fan chime in that he needs it for racing, that’s good. I was not racing.
PK, I agree. The only rudder of real value I’ve had was on a surf ski.