Compensating for Wind

 Compensating for Wind

More than any other factor, wind influences kayaks. Anything over 10 knots (11+ miles per hour) begins to affect a kayak. (Water current can also impact a boat.) When sitting on water, your body or any part of your boat can capture wind and act as a sail. This will impact your speed and direction of travel.

If, for example, you have a ruddered boat and the rudder is in the up position on your boat's deck, it can catch wind and potentially hinder your progress.

A direct headwind is the toughest for a paddler to overcome. More often a kayaker is faced with what is known as a quartering wind, where wind hits you on an angle.

If your goal is to paddle straight toward an object and wind blows against you at an angle, your boat will act like a weather vane. For example, if you want to paddle toward noon, and the wind is coming from 2 o'clock, the back end of your boat will want to conform to the wind and fall in line with it, just like a weather vane. Thus the front end of the boat will head right into wind.

How do you correct that? Counteract with corrective paddle strokes, such as a sweep stroke on the opposite side of your boat. Or you can drop your rudder. That's what a rudder is mainly designed to do—to control the back end of the boat and keep it from being blown around in the wind. You can also steer with a rudder, but a rudder's primary use is to minimize the effect of wind.

Other boats have a skeg—a fixed blade that can't be rotated as a rudder can. It effectively acts as a rudder, but it can't be used to turn your boat. It enables you to more easily track a straight line in case you're coping with big winds, or one of your hands tends to overpower the other during your strokes.

Skegs can be fully or partially deployed. Tinker with its positioning as you progress. Try it fully deployed. If that's too much, pull it back just a little bit. With a little experimenting and fine-tuning, you should eventually find a sweet spot.