: The way I use my skeg, it's only deployed out in deeper water anyway, away
: from the sand and junk. Doing that has kept me from jamming the thing so
: far.

That's the way I use mine, too. But I had originally made the skeg slot so
tight that any beach launches tended to get enough sand into the outer couple
of millimetres of slot to jam it solid.

: Starting out, one thing I do before leaving the shore area is to test operate
: the deployment to make sure it works while there's still time to fix
: anything.

With a launch into surf, you need to paddle beyond the break before you
really get chance to check anything like this. Its a real b*gger once out
there to find that the only way to get the skeg to work is to land back
through that surf, and get a knife out.

: On the beach, I tail-drag the kayak, but I make sure the bow is lifted high
: enough that the skeg area is always clear.

Steeply shelving beaches with no surf were never a problem - launch backwards
after checking the skeg is clear. Shallow shelving beaches with surf were a
guaranteed skeg stopper. However, remedial work to the skeg slot seems now
to have cured this. I'll know how to build the slot for next time. My object
in starting this thread was to see what operating mechanisms people might
know of - not to avoid jamming, but to be quicker to build and equally
reliable as the s/steel cable method. I don't like the bungie/cord method -
it takes me both hands (and a foot on the back of the cockpit coaming -
standing outside the boat) to fully raise the skeg on my wife's Romany as
the bungie tension has to be so great to get the thing to drop down. This
is the result of having both bungie and cord go up through the same tube to
the deck - the attachment points are too close to the pivot, so more force
is needed on both controls to make the skeg move. With a steel cable, it is
normal to have the control attach much further from the pivot, so you need
less force, and have a geater travel of the control, giving you a finer
judgement of how much skeg is down.

: Finally, it never hurts to label the 'up' and 'down' locations with some
: decals or paint marks, just in case someone else is driving.

As it happens, no-one else seems to fit my boat, except my wife (for whom
it was originaly conceived to be a good fit) who finds the primary stability
too low - most people who would be comfortable in her have their own :-)

The "up" and "down" locations are the maximum travel of the control on my
system. By adjusting where the knob grips the cable (using two screws down
inside the knob) you can change the depth of maximum deployment. I have it
set so the skeg never comes completely clear of the slot, which would seem
to make it a lot more vulnerable to damage if caught by a wave from the side
whilst among the rocks, although in practice, I wouldn't have the skeg down
for rock hopping unless I had managed to forget to raise it. A similar
situation might arise when surfing in - the skeg would usually be down to
help avoid broaching, and would be pushed up on contact with the beach -
unless you broach in the break in the shallows - better to avoid surfing
the last bit in to land unless a seal landing is required :-) Of course,
with a cord/bungie system where the cord raises the skeg, any breakage of
this would leave the skeg unavoidably deployed. I guess the secret there is
preventative maintenance (ie. check and renew the string from time to time).

Andy