There are tie on skegs associated with some of the historic Greenland kayaks in museums. These can help in challenging crosswind and down wind conditions although they do add noticeable drag. Years ago I experimented with this but found the drag of the strings around the kayak unacceptable. I created a keyhole shaped aluminum channel for a rapid detachable version but never pursued production because the Greenland Kayak that I ultimately decided to build with students is reasonably well behaved in rough water, and if I was heading out for longer in challenging conditions I was probably going to be paddling one of my modern designs.
Recently however, I’ve been trying to push all of my work to the highest possible level so that has me looking at skegs again (for the Greenland Kayaks only). In the recent Greenland redesign I started with a mechanical drop skeg and immediately decided that I couldn’t abide the weight, expense, complexity, and slot drag. But I’m still skeg-curious so I thought I would experiment with this single historic example of a skeg tied directly to a rub strip.
Being removable it seems like this would let me get rid of the extra drag completely when I don’t need it, and costing just a few dollars and weighing just a few ounces seems pretty reasonable as well. I’m making my rub strip longer so I can experiment with a variety of locations on the bottom of the kayak.
(illustrations from Kayaks of Greenland posted with permission from author)
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