From surf to marathon - a rudders transition

Last year I started doing some marathon racing in my ski.

Not the intended use of an ocean ski I know but it seems to be quite a popular way to race more often in our part of the world and can be very competitive amongst local paddlers.

I got hold of what Carbonology considers to be their flat water rudder and away I went.

I soon noticed at various events much smaller rudders on other ski's but I didnt really have the need to investigate other options for my ski.

The Carbonology flat water rudder is infact a very versatile rudder. I didn't take it off my ski most of the year this year, using it for all but over 3 metre swells and finding it very effective.

However this weekend I am doing a river race that is said to have a lot of weed and early in the new year I am doing another race that has very shallow sections.

So I asked around as to whether I could adapt my current rudder, unsure of how it would respond to cutting?

The official word from Carbonology was that the rudders have a solid core so go ahead and cut away.

First things first I had to figure out the leading edge angle, I marked the rudder using the weed guard angle as a guide.


Next I used a grinding stone on my hand held drill to cut away the bulk of the rudder not needed.



I then swapped to an orbital sander to start refining the leading edge and bottom of the rudder.





As you can see there was an air pocket in the trailing edge of the rudder which ended up being a blessing in disguise, I sanded back the bottom and ended up making the rudder another 1/2-3/4 inch shorter.

Here is the finished product!




As the rudder finished up being shorter than I had planned (90mm) I was a bit nervous on how well it would turn so even though the sun had set I quickly fitted it and walked the 200m down to the beach and went for a quick paddle in about a one foot chop....It turned really well Very happy with this rudder mod

Here is a pic of the Stellar weedless rudder for your reference, some of us use these in our races up the rivers/esturies here in Auckland. Turns fine, did make my SES a little less stable sitting still but once paddling no problems.

www.stellarkayaks.co.nz/Spareparts%20Ima...urfSkiRudderWeed.jpg

I have the Weed rudder on my Stellar SEL and it certainly is working well. At training the other day we had some weed problems and I did not notice it but others with standard ski rudders were getting build up throughout the session.

Good info Thanks!
Do you have an idea of what that solid core is? Was it solid like epoxy and filler?
Did you need to seal it with resin or epoxy?