Hello Dave,

As a "purist" of sorts, I really didn't want to put a rudder on my 19' single. However, the guy I do all my training paddles with is a very strong paddler in a very fast boat (with a rudder too) and I was having to do so many corrective strokes (paddling in open ocean, large swells, heavy current, wind, etc.) that I finally went with the rudder. Saturday I got my first "real" test with a 15-mile paddle. I never had to do one single corrective stroke, and we paddled all-out for half of the 15 miles, and kept a good clip for the rest. It was beautiful. I would recommend the rudder, and you can scroll down to about Thursday's postings and see pics of my rudder system.