A sunny trip with the Seajett

Another sunny day this weekend and I made the same trip as last week. But now I took the Seajett and the Epic Active Touring paddle. I didn't have speed measurements with the Seajett yet so I was curious about the results. The weather was about the same as last week: wind 4 (to 5) Bft but from an other direction. Despite all the plans to add a rudder to the Seajett, nothing has been done so far. I did however reduce the size of the skeg so that it fits in the housing. And I altered the mechanism by shortening the operation knob so that the skeg has a larger swing.

The changed skeg configuration became obvious on the water: with the skeg up the boat went from left to right and I couldn't control it enough to go straight forward. So I always let the skeg partly down, even against the wind. Furthermore the skeg proved to be sufficient to prevent weathercocking in all directions. So with this new skeg configuration the handling performance was not decreased and the gain is that the skeg can be withdrawn completely in the hull.

The dynamic behaviour in waves is very good. The Seajett never slams on the wave, it smoothly goes through it. Stability in all kind of waves, also from aside, is excellent. However, it tracks not very good in waves, you need to do a lot of corrections to hold the Seajett on the desired course. Happily it is easy to correct but this can become tiresome on long trips. Of course when you have a rudder the corrections may be easier. However, you will be continuous busy with the rudder. May be this can become an automatism... else it would become tiresome also. If you zoom in the track you see the winding, not very straight line:

The wind was South East, so on the first part I had the wind from aside and a bit behind, the second part the wind was pushing me in the back. So, a good recipe for high speeds. However, the recorded average of 7,7 km/h is a little disappointing then.

The way back with the wind fully and partly against me the average speed was 5,6 km/h which is not surprising.

Rest time on isle t Hooft

After returning there was a unpleasant surprise. When carrying the kayak out the water I heard the water sloshing within both compartments. A few drops may be acceptable but there were liters of water in both. At the boat house I filled both compartments with water and watch where the leaks are.
With the boat in normal position there were no leaks. However when the kayak was turned upside down the cause of the leaking was quickly discovered: both hatches leak. Apparantly the rubber lids do not close well enough. Strange, as these should have the correct size for this type. They are KajakSport lids expecially for the VCP small hatch size. And they do have a thight fit. The rims under the hatch rings seem allright too. The next trip I will try to temporary fit some original VCP lids...