Beautiful design, beautiful execution. Very impressive solution to the skeg challenge.

Am I correct in assuming that the skeg can be removed with the carbon control rod left attached?

I went with the rope/shock cord option on my build last year, but if I had seen your design first, I think I would have followed your example. One further thought on the kinking issue - one could make a curved half pipe just above the position of the carbon rod, with enough room for the skeg to clear underneath. Compression strong enough to bend the rod would then simply cause it to lift enough to seat it in the channel above it, with zero chance of mis-behaviour once it was seated in the channel. You could even make the channel out of half of a teflon tube, which would avoid friction. OTOH, your testing suggest that this would be overkill.

Anyway a beautiful boat, and very fine skeg installation.

Best regards,

Allan Edie

: Thought I would post an update. I have been in the water enough
: time now since the skeg has been installed to give a good review
: of it's operation. Overall I have to say I'm very pleased. The
: skeg area seems to be just right giving a good balance in all
: wind conditions. Just deploy or retract until the right balance
: area is found. It's almost like having a steering rudder. The
: control box slider works great. The slider stops about 3/4"
: from either end leaving plenty of room to insert a finger even
: with gloves. The friction sliding action of the carbon fiber rod
: in the teflon tube is just right. It holds its position but yet
: moves very very smoothly. Make you go ooooh... when sliding it.
: The angle of the skeg in full deployment is still swept back
: enough that it does not hang onto any weeds yet gives you a low
: drag foil shape. Best of all there is no concern for a kinked
: cable. I have purposely run her aground, ran over stumps and
: lilly roots and it just pushes the skeg up without incident. I'm
: not saying it's unbreakable. Care should be taken not to back
: into something solid on the fine trailing edge and I would
: imagine if it had a good side impact it may break the skeg. I
: bet it would dump you first though.

: What I would do different:
: Not much. I think I would build the skeg box and skeg out of carbon
: fiber, only to reduce more weight. The CF pushrod and teflon
: housing is super light so it would make sense to complete the
: package. The other thing that I noticed is that I placed my skeg
: control box on the topside of the deck which pools water. It's
: no big deal and works very well there, but I might think about
: mounting it more over the sheer line depending on the hull
: design.