I’m a canoer, but my wife talked me into trying a sea kayak on Lake Huron (big lakes generally give me the willies). Anyway it was a blast once I got used to controlling the boat. I had control going into the wind or with a following wind. But with a quartering wind I found the back of the kayak “skidding” out. This is the opposite of what usually happens in a canoe since my wife is much lighter than me and the wind catches the bow. Two questions: why does this happen? and are you supposed to use the rudder in these situations? I’d kind of heard from kayaking friends that you only use the rudder in extreme conditions. This experience may make me reconsider kayaking since you can really haul in those tandems and take on much larger water than in a canoe.
No reason to reconsider
What boat were you in exactly? I’m no particular help on the fine points of paddling a tandem, but it might help those who are.
One function of a skeg, or a rudder, is to essentially contain the rear of kayak from getting moved more easily since the default tendency of most kayaks is to weathercock rather than leecock. It’s a better idea actually - given a choice it’s better that the boat turn into the wind than away from it for safety etc.
Some boats do that more or less, so some need more or less aggressive use of its tracking device. Some manuvers that are easy to execute in a single kayak to handle this may be better done with the aid of a tracking device like skeg or rudder in a tandem.
Like I said, I’m not great hand with tandems. Hopefully someone who is will weigh in here. But you shouldn’t take that experience as a reason to stay away from kayaks for your stated purpose.
type boat
I don’t know. It was just a rental. It had closed cockpits and was narrow compared to the other rentals. The guy who rented it said if we canoed a lot we’d be able to handle the narrower hull.