Last Wednesday I paddled the Fjord on the lake 'Alkmaardermeer' and surveyed her behaviour in wind: a SW-wind at force 4Bft. Waves approx. 20-30cm
I wrote already about this topic in the first article, but since then I tailorfitted the kayak.
I concluded earlier that the Fjord weathercocks quite remarkable.
Today I concluded that the weathercocking is still there but to a lesser degree due to the weaker wind. Again, the Fjord could be trimmed perfectly with the skeg. But that’s no news.
Next thing I did was lifting the skeg and trying to keep course with only sweepstrokes. I did this on several courses compared to the wind-direction. That was not too easy and in fact rather tiring.
Now I added edging to my sweepstrokes and shifting weight as well: and thus I recorded a big improvement. In fact I could easily keep course now while using much less paddle-energy. There was only one note to make: the timing of the weight shifting was important. To my opinion this improvement in compensating for weathercocking was the result of tailorfitting my cockpit. I got now much better grip and could transfer the paddle-energy easily to the boat's course.
A final note on weathercocking-corrections is that the course with the wind at an angle from behind is the less easiest in keeping course without the skeg.
In general I could add the remark that you can travel faster when using the variable skeg. That’s logical because nothing of your energy is wasted for steering.
In addition I investigated the manouevrability. When only using sweepstrokes it is, parallel to my conclusions above, not possible to make quick changes in course. The Fjord keeps course very well. And when dropping the skeg she travels like on rails.
But when edging aggressively and while using hips, knees and feet, the tailorfitted Fjord becomes quite a manoeuvrable kayak.
So it seems that the Fjord can be a good travel-companion. Only it is not advised for a beginner to enter challenging conditions with her.
The boobytrap is that the stability of the Fjord is of course perfect suited to beginners, but when they enter nasty conditions and the skeg fails they could easily get into problems because it is likely that they are not able to perform aggressive edging. So be aware.
More on paddling the Fjord will follow.
I will have to observe the behaviour of the tailorfitted Fjord in windy conditions and with bigger waves.