You could always replace the abomination with a nice Seal Line Smart Track rudder.
heeling… You don’t lean… the boat does. You probably know this but others may not.
I was teaching kayaking to a Merchant Marine Captain and used the term lean to help her turn the kayak… She did.
Wetness ensued.
She was not happy with me as she followed orders to the t. And the orders were wrong.
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The torso vs shoulder opinions are many. The above comment says it all….
If they used the same option as my Venture Easky, the hole for the rudder pin and the channel for the control cable are molded in. The Easky came w/o a rudder but I knew I could add one and considered swapping one from another boat. But after 12 years I have never felt it needed one.
I’ve had a composite Capella 169 for many years. This was the original composite design, with a bit more rocker than later models, later updated to be a little less squirrelly and offered in multiple sizes. I’m not sure how the 166 would compare, but I think that’s post-upgrade, so likely less prone to weathercocking overall.
I know a person can have fun in a Capella without using a skeg, because at most, I’ve experimented with it a couple of times. I bought it new from Charles River Kayak & Canoe around 2005, and one look at it now, you’ll know it’s been used a lot. I’m careful with my kayaks regarding shore landings, I don’t drag my kayaks, I avoid shallows, oyster beds, and rocks, but I do have patches where my heels wore through the carbon/kevlar layers on the inside. The diminishing stiffness and webs of gelcoat cracks in high stress areas are all signs of plenty of rough water stress.
It’s been almost exclusively a rough water kayak for me, for playing in the ocean waves and paddling on pretty rough days. It is a very maneuverable kayak on edge. When on edge, it will spin either direction much easier than when flat down, so there is no rule that you have to edge to the outside of the turn, especially when waves get steeper. Edging to the outside of a turn does work very effectively, and you can make fairly sharp turns on the move with nothing but a sweep stroke and a deep outside edge.
But moments when the braking effect of inside stern rudders aren’t a concern, when a slowing effect is actually desirable, or you need to make the most abrupt turn possible, leaning into your paddle for an inside turn stern rudder is both highly effective and a lot of fun in the Capella.
I’ve found that when waves start pushing the stern around, it can be more useful to have the hull flat when the wave hits the stern and initiates a push. It will effect your direction less when the hull is sitting flat in the water.
Then use an edge when that push stops in order to correct your heading. Simply holding a constant edge has proved less effective than this for me when the wind is present and the seas are steep. The Capella rides nicely in waves, and you can make some pretty sharp corrections once riding on a wave.
Another way to put it would be to take the advantages you’re offered. When a wave is pushing your stern to one side or the other, what you’re offered is gravity to travel down the wave. A stroke to prevent the stern movement while it’s happening can be futile, and it works against taking advantage of gravity to travel down the wave, because it slows you. The hull flat to the water will have more resistance to spinning, will maintain greater forward moving efficiency, and a forward stroke will help you catch the wave to take advantage of the gravity of the situation. Once that moment has occurred and you’re riding along rather than in the process of being overtaken, you can adjust your heading without a wave actively working against you.
So it’s a very fun hull for an active participant. I hope you enjoy it.
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The Smart Track rudder itself is fine, but my wife went through two sets of rudder cables due to the way the pedal assembly routes the cable. There are too many sharp bends and the cable frays and eventually breaks. Annapolis Canoe & Kayak recommended the pedal system by Sea-Lect. Several years and no more problems. There are a number of other rudder kits that may be better than the Smart Track as well. We just replaced the pedal system and kept the Smart Track rudder. The other advantage of the Sea-Lect pedal system is that it is constructed of a high strength polymer. The Smart Track pedal system is aluminum and the fasteners corrode over time when exposed to salt water and can be hell to work on. You can buy the pedal system, the rudder, or both in a kit.
I just installed the Sea-lect rudder controls in my WS Tsunami. The install was a bit of a pain, but I like them.
Rudders on my CD boats would never cut you.
Actually the rudder controls on my CD Squall did cut a guy at a pool session. I had missed a small bit of one of the wires that ran to the rudder over the top of the rear deck when I was covering them up. He walked by and hit that spot and trust me, there was blood involved.
That and realizing I never used the thing anyway was pretty much the final straw for me and rudders.
I stand corrected thanks for the pickup on model numbers CapeFear. The 169 was the one that could especially frustrate paddlers. Subsequent models tried to smooth that out. Maybe the 166 was a companion to the 173?
Swiss cheese for a brain these days. Of course I can still remember the phone number of our first house, which has been totally useless information for 57 years.
Missed the wire?
Thanks CapeFear - enjoyed your post. I definitely have a lot to learn.
I picked up my boat yesterday from Charles River Canoe & Kayak. It is a 2004 that was used as a rental boat - maybe it was already in the rental fleet when you picked up your Capella.
They maintained it well, and I am embarrassed to say that it does have a skeg. Obviously I had no idea what I was buying when I bought this boat.
Good explanation - edging is one things I am looking forward to playing around with. The class I just took did a good job of going through the mechanics of the various strokes, but only with the boat flat. As a river paddler, I pretty much always lean/heal into the turn. Learning to the lean outside of the turn will be a little different, but freestyle canoeists do it.
Let me make sure that I understand this - a forward stroke as the wave passes under you will pull the bow up and allow the stern to fall down the face of the wave to help maintain course? If I have that right that is pretty cool.
Hope to finally get the boat out tonight to play around.
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The Squall had metal cables in the vicinity of the rudder, that were outside of and above the back deck. As did the Storm. It turns out they were pretty sharp if you hit them the wrong way.
Yup.
One of these days I will have to do the right job on fixing the rope skeg on the Romany. Meantime I get to Maine and have a terribly maneuverable boat. So I don’t try to make the boat track straight in waves. Instead vary the emphasis on a given stroke so that the overall effect is to keep going where I want.
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We might be envisioning different things, I’m not sure? I think one big difference between sea kayaks and whitewater kayaks is the ability to pull the bow up or dive the bow. You have something of 360 degree control of raising and dipping your edges in whitewater kayaks. In a sea kayak, you have side-to-side edging, and very little/almost no control over raising or diving your bow and stern. So I was thinking about rear-quartering seas - this is what represents the biggest directional control challenge for most sea kayakers. The wave reaches and acts on your stern first. In my experience, thoughts of raising your bow in a sea kayak, and actions such as leaning back, have pretty limited results. And you will almost always be better served by remaining in your strongest forward stroke position, leaning slightly forward, and thinking about acceleration and/or most effectively performing maneuvering strokes. I’ve used the leaning back thing, seen others use the lean back thing, but I think it’s more rare than people realize at being truly effective towards anything, and most often probably overall detrimental towards a better actively controlled experience. The idea I was putting forward is that once you are moving at the speed of the wave, it is no longer pushing you, it is no longer acting on your stern in that pushy way that causes your kayak to rotate.
So you get out there in rear-quartering seas, and the waves keep pushing your stern. A natural reaction to that would be to start applying strokes to prevent your heading from changing. You try not to allow your kayak to rotate at all. The more you interrupt your forward stroke, the less speed you maintain. The more directional control strokes you use, the more you take away from your speed. The slower you are traveling in relation to the waves, the pushier they become. If they are pushier, you have to use more directional control strokes to maintain your heading. Slower still. Pushier still. So you can see how in a situation where directional control seems difficult, your forward stroke can really fall apart and you can be left feeling like you’re really struggling.
I’m suggesting that what has proven very helpful for me, and a lot of fun, is to let go of maintaining an exact heading, like thoughts that I need to aim directly to 45 degrees NE to stay perfectly on course. The Capella is a very maneuverable boat, and a person doesn’t need to get stifled by working to maintain an exact heading when seas get pushy. You can increase your travelling speed dramatically by what I described above - keeping the hull flat as you feel the wave start to rotate your kayak - just give in to it and let it happen, focus on forward speed, and edge and correct once the push is over, and you are either getting a ride in front of the wave, or it’s passing under you. Either way, you maintain more speed, the correction will require less effort, and the next wave to overtake you will be less pushy.
Now rear quartering waves that don’t cause your kayak to accelerate aren’t that pushy against your stern either, and won’t cause that much difficulty in directional control.
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My Necky Arluk 1.9 isn’t really affected by stern quartering waves, but does have some trouble with strong stern quartering wind without deploying the rudder. The boat has a straight keel. I wouldn’t want to do any serious distance in stern quartering winds relying only on edging or compensating with paddle strokes.
Nothing on any of my CD rudders could cut me. Just walked by one and pulled the tarp and rubbed my hands all over everything without a problem. I’d have to see a Storm.
Again, for the paddling venues I enjoy, which the is rougher water stuff in rocks and surf, I personally prefer not to have a rudder on my boat. When I come out (wet exit) of a sit inside kayak, I am next to a water filled (100 lb plus) “log” bouncing around. I prefer to not have a protruding piece attached to the “log” that can be dropped on or pushed across my body by water action.
One of my initial kayaks was the CD Squall with a rudder. It was not a great surfer. I was leery of the rudder when swimming in small surf stuff but never got cut by it. I got rid of the boat because it was a lousy surfer but I don’t miss having to worry about a rudder in the surf zone either.
Couple of years later, I became a dedicated sit inside kayak surfer. Even these relatively small (7.5-8.5’ long) sit in side surf rides become very “hard to hang on to” when filled with water. It’s much harder with a longer sea kayak. As a result, I (and my wetsuit) have been cut by surf fins when getting thrashed around in the surf zone.
Again, my personal choice is just that - mine for what I do. Don’t construe my choice as making a judgement about yours or someone else’s skills or whatnot because of their preference and use of a rudder, skeg, or none of the above. YMMV and it is certainly your choice to make for what you do.
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If you are worried about the frayed ends of SS cable, the are other alternatives.
Dyneema ans Spectra are very good; they have very little stretch (either wet or dry), do not corrode, and have no splintered ends that look like some medieval torture device. They can be a bit harder to install because they have no inherent rigidity, but attaching a piece of baling wire to the ends of it can make it easier.
