After a few months of paddling my Pygmy Arctic Tern, I'm generally very happy with its handling. It doesn't weathercock at all, though it has a slight tendency to want to point OFF the wind. Stability in beam waves is very predictable. In a following sea, however, the boat becomes very skittish and unpredictable, especially when I'm paddling down-current. Reviews of this boat mention this behaviour, so I'm guessing that it has something to do with the boat design (and probably something to do with my abilities, too). I'm wondering, however, if I can improve the handling by re-distributing the weight in the boat (putting a bag of water in the front or the back hatch, for example). Any ideas? More drastically, I've also considered adding a small strip of wood(the thickness of a SOF wear strip) on the bottom of the stern to give the boat just a hint of negative rocker at the stern end (like the "s" shape of a Greenland kayak), not enough to actually be a skeg. The boat has quite a bit of rocker. Any opinions on this? How could I try this temporarily - carve a piece of wood and ducktape it to the stern? best, Severn Clay *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sat Nov 02 2002 - 10:18:06 PST
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