A general picture of the result of the outing is that I now resemble Quasimodo, with a normal right side and a gigantic distorted hump of muscle on my left shoulder.

The problem with a bow skeg is, when your bow is up in the wind, the water is moving in the same direction of the wind.

When paddling in waves, your boat is only really exposed to the wind when it is at the top of a wave. In any wave greater than about 12" (~30cm) the boat is pretty well sheltered while it is in the trough. It is only when it on top of the wave, that the wind really matters.

A particle on a wave orbits in a circular motion. So at parts of wave motion the water is moving in the same direction as the wave and at other parts the water moves opposite to the wave motion. With wind waves, water at the top of the wave moves in the same direction as the wind.

Putting a skeg into this moving water at the bow of the boat will serve to push the bow down wind at the top of the wave and lock it in place at the bottom of the wave. So it will not help too much from keeping the bow from getting pushed off, and it will be even harder to turn the boat back up wind.

I find the best way to deal with quartering seas while going up wind is to keep the boat loose and easy to turn. It is fairly inevitable that the bow will get blown off as it crests over a wave. With an easy to turn boat, you can correct as the center of the boat lifts over the wave.

It can help if you edge the boat away from breaking waves instead of leaning into them. Breaking waves hitting the deck tend to push the bow off more readily than showing the wave a bit of the bottom. This can also free up the stern a bit so the whole boat shifts sideways instead of keeping the stern locked in while the bow is up in the wind. This is leaning the scary direction, but it can work.

I sometimes "tack" upwind, going straight upwind for a while then go across the wind for a while and then turn back up wind. You may find that there is one point of sail where the lee cocking is most pronounced and you can make easier progress if you choosing headings on either side of that direction.

http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Demos/waves/wavemotion.html