Four out of our 5 sea kayaks are fitted with skegs rather than rudders. There is often confusion about the purpose of a skeg. A skeg is a little fin that drops out of the bottom of the stern of a sea kayak. Unlike a rudder they can only be raised and lowered but not used (directly) for steering i.e. they don’t turn the boat.

The skegs on our 2 scorpios are operated via a lever to the side of the cockpit. You need to pinch the mechanism and then slide the slider, however the skegs on most sea kayaks simply slide backwards and forwards.

Anyway, what are they for? Some people think they just help you to paddle in a straight line. Well, that’s only partially true. Most sea kayaks are designed to ‘weather cock’, that is they will swing into the wind as the bow of the boat tends to ‘lock’ into the water better than the stern, which tends to skid across the water in a side or following wind. So no skeg is great if you want to paddle into the wind. If you want to paddle downwind or across wind, it can be quite challenging to paddle in a straight line, so that’s when you drop the skeg. This will reduce the tendency of the stern to ‘skid’ and will help you paddle in a straight line. You can play with how much skeg needs to be deployed in different conditions.

Skegs can, in certain circumstances, help you to turn your boat. So if you are paddling downwind or across wind with the skeg down and want to point upwind, simply raise the skeg and keep paddling, you will slowly turn upwind. The converse is also true.

If there is no wind or you feel the wind is having little affect on your ability to handle the boat, it’s best to keep the skeg up. It’s also quite hard to turn with the skeg down.

One very annoying thing about skegs is that the skeg housing has a tendency to collect stones and pebbles, jamming the skeg. The worst thing you can do (and this is from personal experience) is to try and force the skeg leaver to free the skeg – that will simply permanently kink the wire which will then need replacing (a right pain in the a**e). Many people attach a small length of string to the skeg itself (a small hole is often provided for this purpose – or you can drill one). To free the skeg, pull (or get someone else to pull) the string to free the skeg.