I installed a skeg in my cedar strip kayak over the winter and just tried it out yesterday, only to find that I have a leak. After about half an hour in the water I got about a quart of water in the rear compartment.

The skeg is from Onno paddleshop. The cable tubing comes installed on the top of the skeg box and is heat sealed and further clamped with a SS hoseclamp. I'm pretty confident that the leak is not coming from there. The only other part of the skeg/skeg box assembly that could possibly leak is the SS bolt that serves as the axle for the skeg and goes through the sides of the skeg box. The instructions that come with the skeg say to either epoxy around the bolt and nut heads to seal it, or to use silicone sealant, which would make things easier if you ever had to remove the bolt/axle. I used silicone sealant.

Looking at that area, it's possible that I didn't get enough sealant around that bolt and maybe that's where the water is coming through. If that's the cases I can easily remedy it.

The only other way for water to get in is where the skeg box is glued/filleted to the kayak hull. I examined my fillets and they seem to completely cover and fill the hull/skegbox seam all the way around the skegbox, so I would think that is waterproof, but then I got to wondering. I used fast cure resin for this fillet, and since fast cure resin blushes, could blush cause the bond between the fillet and skegbox/hull to be non-waterproof?

I used U.S. Composites epoxy and thickened it with plastic mini-fibers from Jamestown Distributing.

Thanks for any help you can provide.