Chris, thank you very much for your kind and insightful thoughts. You are the 1st person to respond to the content of one of my posts. Yahoo! And a heavyweight, too!

But the joke's on me as - for once - the questions were mostly rhetorical. They are the stuff of my quest (folly?). I'll post the dwgs I made the first evening ( after being inspired by George's and Pete's post) to show you where my thoughts were initially. I've made too many dwgs, sketches, mistakes and U-turns subsequently to show much more without getting (all of us) distracted by the minuteia.(whew)

I had a good yuk about your inflatable variable geometry and so I must admit I was getting carried away with the phrase more than the reality. I guess the most radical variable is your body movement and paddle position. But I'll leave this with one intriguing notion - If there are two main streams of thought in surfyaks, one using hard rails ( for turning ) and the second convinced of soft rails (for spinning) ..... - can one make variable rail ( that are not a joke, that work, are light, etc. etc.)?? And I have an idea of how you can.

And also skeg location (in the hull) and shape (usually high aspect ratio) are not necessarily straight forward. Here's a scenario...

Scenario 1:

You're flying down the wave face w/ your skeg deployed for directional control, you cut, you retract the skeg, flatten the yak slightly and do a 180. You're now surfing backwards, but have minimal control.....wouldn't it be nice to have the same control (as forwards) by installing a retractable skeg in the FRONT of the kayak but deploying BACKWARDS?? Now this in not too dumb (or is it?) because when you're playing in whitewater, backwards is almost as usual as forwards!

Scenario 2:

You're flying down the wave face as before, you retract your rear skeg, but start side slipping slightly and gorf that you are (me!) you just can't get that yak to spin ...... so you ever so slightly deploy your FRONT skeg and you spin like a mad whzre!!(- is this true? would you really?) And then when you're 180'd you fully deploy the front skeg. But your poor skeg has got to work forwards for one and backward for the other. Could it? Would it? Should it? or FORGET IT???

Scenario 3:

You're flying down the wave face but slowing down a bit and suddenly you're in broaching situation, surfing sideways and being carried along with the wave. Your high brace is ineffective and danger lurks nearbye (people, surfbds, rocks or shore). So you deploy your centre skegs, maybe stay upright, but slowing down your sideways momentum enough to take some evasive manouvers. Your might roll, but you also could be using your high brace actually for a high brace! Or what about trying your front skeg and then your rear, at least you'd be doing something that might result in you getting out of tricky situation.

This one is probably stretching it but why stop short of home?

Anyway not to take up too much time! These are just some of the various dumb ideas i have and are the basis for trying to figure out what I'm about to do. I'll post that early dwg as soon as I learn how.

-Mike