: Brian,
: I'm in the process of building a Chesapeake 16. Do you think that adding a
: skeg would be necessary, or just a convienience. Or might shifting the
: seating position a few inches fore or aft serve the same end.
: Thanks,
: Bob

I'm a fan of skegs, so I'm biased in that direction. Weight shift can also make a big difference, but it will depend a lot on the boat in question. For example, I'm paddling a Nordkapp HM, which has an "integral skeg" built into the hull profile. It's relatively neutral in wind and I've found that I can make it weathercock or leecock slightly by leaning forward or back, respectively. A boat with a significant bias toward weathercocking or leecocking would require a larger weight shift and that could be difficult to do while paddling. Mariner Kayaks offers a sliding seat for their boats that allows you to trim their behavoir via weight shifting. If you have a way of doing the same thing, it would be an interesting experiment. However, Lee's advice to paddle the boat for a while first sounds like the best idea. Until you know how the boat reacts, you won't know best how to fix it.

BTW, if you want to see a really good example of how a retractable skeg can be used to trim a boat's handling, paddle a Kajak Sport Millenium or Viking; they're designed specifically to work with a skeg. These boats tend to weathercock with the skeg up, but become neutral with it partially down and will leecock with it all the way deployed. This gives the paddler tremendous versatility to trim the boat for the prevailing conditions and the desired course.

Also, simply moving a deck bag from the fore deck to the aft deck, or vice-versa, can significantly affect the tracking of the boat, as it changes not only the weight bias, but also the "sail" area that the wind acts upon.