Subject: Re: [baidarka] Back to skegs for a minute
From: Greg Stamer (gstamer@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Oct 20 2001 - 11:20:01 EDT
>Anyway, I'm curious about how they work and how much drag the lines
>produce, and so on, and I can probably build one in less than an hour, so
>why not? Somebody at the Delmarva had a strap-on rubber skeg (not sure I'd
>even tell people I had something like that), but I didn't get a chance to
>try it out. Don't know where they got it. I also have part of an old photo
>from Skinboats in Greenland that shows a whole rack of West Greenland
>kayaks and they all have skegs. I'll post it for the curious.
Phil,
I don't mean to shamelessly promote my website
(http://www.magicnet.net/~gstamer/QK.html), but just this week I posted a
photo that shows several kayaks in Greenland with skegs. One kayak is even
built intentionally hogged, yet still has an external skeg. The photo also
shows the contrast between a competition "rolling kayak" and one made for
racing.
A skeg will not cure all evils. Last year, I used an old kayak built by
Maligiaq Padilla in Greenland, that was equipped with a lashed-on skeg. The
cockpit was not optimally balanced for me, with my weight too far forward.
During some extremely challenging beam winds and seas, I found that the
kayak weathercocked strongly, despite the skeg, and yet, seemed to prevent
my corrective strokes from taking effect. In calm weather the skeg made it
difficult to weave around icebergs and bits, especially since at 17" beam,
there wasn't much side rocker present, when you placed it on edge. The skeg
also prevents you from running the kayak up the beach for landing/launching.
Of course, you can't make too many judgements from paddling just one sample,
and I was limited by having only a few days to become accustomed to the
kayak, making "operator error", a likely problem. I do intend to play around
with skegs on future kayaks as they would be quick to make, install and
remove.
Greg Stamer
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