Stellar SE "Flatwater Special"

Since nearly all my paddling is done on flatwater (the Great Lakes are the nearest "big water" paddling location, and they're about 3 hrs away), I needed to make a few alterations to my SE to get it ready for our USCA race season. Three basic changes made the boat a "Flatwater Special".

First, I installed a Van Dusen over-stern rudder. Understern rudders have a nasty habit of catching weeds and getting bent/broken by rocks/logs/etc. (as I already experienced on one shallow lake).

Next, I found a plug for the scuppers in some plastic sit-on-tops in my local boat shop that happened to fit my bailer perfectly. There's no need to start a race with the foot well full of water on a river (and particularly when practicing in cold weather!).

Finally, I re-strung the rudder with Q-Power Spectra line, such as Think uses on their boats, and made a double-wind on the rudder pedals to prevent slippage. This increased the rudder response and "feel" of the boat tremendously.

Here's a photo with a little more detail of the Van Dusen rudder installation. I wanted to make it look "factory", so I ran some tubes through the hull from the rudder compartment, setting up the system so I could switch back to an understern pretty easily for our Lake Michigan race. I also taped over the rudder hole on the bottom of the hull to minimize drag.

Here's a photo of the cockpit area, where you can see the bailer plug and the Q-Power Spectra line, with a double wind around the top two holes in the rudder pedals. You can also see where I've pulled the foot straps out of their individual ends, twisted one side, and used the Velcro to hold them together to create a single strap for use with my winter paddling boots.

Finally, here's a photo of the rudder compartment. I joined the Van Dusen rudder line to some rings to make it easy to tie to the foot pedal cables (and easy to untie when I want to use the under-stern rudder).

Thanks for the insight into your flatwater special

I am in the process of finding the right ski for just the same thing, marathon river racing. I am going to demo an SEL in the next week or so.

How did you go getting used to the huge footwell after coming from a V10L, that's about the only thing I dislike about stellars now, IMHO if they narrowed that footwell for a better catch area they would sell twice as many ski's.

How does it go turning with the trailing rudder, some of the races here are up and back courses on a narrow river so if you turn too wide you can get dropped from the bunch. Up until now I have been using a small rudder (5 inch), some guys go as small as 3 inch rudders but they have a large surface area.

The other skis I still haven't crossed off my list from the ones available locally are the Uno, Atom and yet to arrive in western Australia the Carbonology "Flash".

I actually went to the Stellar partially because of the larger footwell. My feet felt cramped in the V10L foot well, and I couldn't paddle it in the winter because I couldn't fit my feet in with anything heavier than a thin neophrene paddling shoe. I really, really like the larger footwell and footplate of this boat, but that's a matter of personal taste.

It turns reasonably well with the over-stern rudder - not too much differently than with the understern, but I've found that either way it doesn't turn as quickly as my V10L did with the understern. If you throw in some lean it will pull around much more quickly. Most of our races are circuits that have one or two turns. The secret to not getting dropped is getting to the turn first and blocking everyone else while you get around it.

I've owned/paddled several other skis, but none of the ones on your list so I can't give you any feedback on those.

red_pepper wrote: The secret to not getting dropped is getting to the turn first and blocking everyone.....

That's fine if you are quick enough to position yourself, I've improved to the point that I can 'just' hold on to the lead bunch in most races but I'm in no position to chose where I am coming into a turn, hence the search for a ski with a faster hull than the Vault.

red_pepper wrote:
I've owned/paddled several other skis, but none of the ones on your list so I can't give you any feedback on those.

Unfortunately it comes down to what is available locally, there are some Aussie made skis on the East coast that have been doing well in marathon racing but they aren't being sold over here in the west yet. Things have improved distribution wise here in the past few years, people were buying skis untested and shipping them here on the reviews of others, of course now we know it's not just about lay-up, weight, etc, paddlers are looking for comfort, stability then focussing on the performance.

Your boat situation is not too different than where I'm located (midwestern USA). Most of the surf ski action is on either coast, so I'm sort of a "duck out of water" paddling a ski in this area, but I sure do enjoy 'em! As such, however, I've had to buy my skis based on reviews for the most part (The V10L was at a local dealer, so I was able to paddle it before buying) and hope for the best. On the plus side, I've been able to own/paddle skis by Think, Epic, Huki, and Stellar.

red_pepper, its a shame you went to the trouble of changing out the rudder lines and still use the bottom hole in the pedals and still tie the line off at the front. Try disconnecting the line at the front and not using the bottom holes in the pedals and you will be amazed at how much the steering improves. I've said it plenty of times before, the bottom holes are too high and provide too much leverage against the pedal moving back when the opposite pedal is depressed. This creates a lot of friction where the lines enter the hull. Personally I find no reason to change the lines once this issue is sorted.

Hey Kayaker Greg: the lines are double looped between the top and middle holes; the aren't held all that tightly through the bottom, so effectively the systems acts as if it's tied off at the top, but it's still adjustable. I tried tying off the original lines at the top, but this is much more effective (the Q-power line is superb!).

I wasn't completely satisified with the performance of the over-stern rudder - the boat was a little more squirrely, less stable, and tended to wander a bit (and the turn radius was larger than desired). I was using the 3rd largest Van Dusen blade, the one they usually put on Mohicans. Having the largest blade with another Van Dusen rudder assembly I've been planning to put on my OC-2, I opted to swap it into the SEL assembly, plus move the rudder lines to the inboard holes on the rudder crank. The blade didn't appear that much larger, but what difference! Those two changes completely transformed the boat - it's about as stable as with the 9" surf rudder, tracks well, and turns noticably tigher, particularly if I lean it a bit. It's also much more responsive. I'm quite happy with this setup!