Redneck Engineering 101; Kayak Rudder

[WTL]

One of my rules for fighting the monkey is very simple; if you can make a reasonable facsimile, don't buy.

Kayaks, especially shorter ones, often have an issue with tracking. One way to improve the handling characteristics is to add a rudder.

I made one out of .125 aluminum sheeting left over from the deck project, a 2x4 and some bungees.

The pictures should make this pretty self explanatory. You can pretty much copy the design of other rudders availalble for sale, the most difficult part would probably be rigging up a cable system but I disliked that idea anyway so I made a simple tiller arm. I normally don't use the rudder to steer, the paddle is so much more convenient, but if you want to track in a certain direction into the wind, it can be adjusted.

The rudder has grooves around the top, like a cam, over which I ran small nylon rope; one rope will pull the rudder up to clear any obstruction, or clear of the water, the other keeps the rudder deployed as a default. Both ropes are tied to bungees which allow the rudder to snap back to the default position after clearing an underwater object.


This saved me over a hundred bucks, and while it might not be all that much to look at it, I couldn't be more pleased with the functionality.