Repairing a sea kayak skeg is easily the most common repair needed on a sea kayak. From a kink in the cable to sand getting stuck in the tubing, at some point you are likely going to have repair or replace your sea kayaks skeg.
Craig Leslie from Sea Kayaking UK takes us through a full video tutorial on how to replace a skeg in a SKUK kayak. Fortunately the process is very similar in other makes of sea kayak skeg systems. It is very useful look into how skeg systems work and how to maintain and fix them, including helpful variations for in-the-field fixes and troubleshooting.
Transcript:
Hi guys, thank you for checking in at the SKUK repairs channel. What we're going to do today is we're going to look at how to repair a kinked skeg wire. A skeg is the only moving part really on one of these sea kayaks and therefore it's really the thing that goes wrong most often.
A kinked skeg wire usually occurs if somebody's had the skeg down and then they've landed on a beach or hit a rock and that forces the skeg back into the box and kinks the wire. Unfortunately what then happens is it doesn't matter how hard you pull the slider on the side of the kayak the skeg won't deploy. Alternatively it may be that you can't get the skeg to come back up. The only way to fix it really is to replace the wire.
The first tool you're going to need is:
- a 2.5 mm Allen key,
- Stainless steel wire, which is what we put in as standard, it's what your kayak will come with.
- 3 mm nylon cord is an alternative option to wire. It's actually often sold as strimmer cord. The benefit of this is it can be cut with conventional scissors. Excellent for repairs in the field or with limited tools.
Okay so step number one is to take your 2.5 mm allen key and locate that into the grub screw inside this slider
okay we're going to loosen
that it's important at this stage that
this is not over
loosened I will show you why in a moment
what I've done here is I've taken the
slider and toggle out of the box just so
that I can show you how this works what
we must never do is over loosen the grub
screw I will show you now what happens
if the
slider moves along the bar like this and
comes away from this hole it can be very
difficult to relocate please remember
when loosening the grub screw only
loosen it enough to release the wire
inside the tube the way to be sure that
this is worked is to move the slider
back slowly and what you should see is
the wire protruding
now okay so the next day just actually
remove the Kink skeg wire turn the coat
on its side at this
point make sure it's balanced we need to
pull the gig out sometimes you need
something just to start that process off
once you've managed to get hold of the
skig pull
it and then it unhooks from the front of
the skage box here
pull all of the wire
[Music]
out now you can see there is the kink in
The skeg Wire that is the problem what
we need to do now is just remove the old
wire from the skeg blade using the same
alen
key we loosen this bolt until you can
see that the bolt
disappears in this hole here once you
can no longer see it in this hole you
can remove with a firm pull the Old Wire
we do sell these replacement skeg wires
they should be long enough to fit all of
our kayak models and they'll come with
taped ends we are finally at the stage
of feeding the new wire we're going to
be feeding this into the hole in the end
of the slider
bar can take a little bit of getting in
initially once it's in it's useful to
just place your finger behind the wire
so that you've got something to push
against as you feed
just keep feeding the wire you might hit
occasional bits of resistance until you
see the wire starting to protrude out of
the skag box at the back of the
boat we're now at the stage where we've
got about 30 cm of wire sticking out of
the skag box we're going to take the
skag blade and reattach that to the wire
the hole here in the top of the skag
blade we're going to feed feed the wire
into there loc at the
wire once you see the wire in this hole
here it has to actually go about another
5 Ms Beyond this hole to be fully
secure there I can feel that I've
reached as far as I can go place a thumb
and a finger either side of that hole
and then as we tighten this that will
prevent the wire from moving out
sideways that is now
fixed perfect what we need to do now is
clip the skeg back inside the
box it's this little slot here it's
going to locate over that
pin excellent we're moving along nicely
now so the next stage is to take up the
excess wire so I'm going to move back to
the slider I'm just going to start
pulling it in until the skag is located
back inside the SK
box excellent we've now got it so that
the skag blade is fully retracted so if
I look back along the kayak I can't see
the skag blade it's fully inside the
kayak and we've got quite a lot of
excess wire so this is where we're going
to trim it important thing here is to
ensure that this slider is all the way
towards the back of the kayak now we're
going to take our wire cutters and we're
going to make a cut in the wire at the
front of this
box and what should happen is the wire
should fall Inside the
Box excellent so we're very nearly
finished now the last job is to push
this slider back towards the front of
the kayak until it
stops and then ret tighten the grub
screw good work now we just need to test
it so This Is The Moment of Truth after
all of our hard work we so I'm going to
push the slider back ah and we've got a
nice smooth movement there in the skeg
deploy
and comes back in
perfect during this process of making
this repair it's possible that some
things could go wrong one of the main
things that can happen is that it can be
very difficult to feed the wire into the
tube inside the kayak cockpit on the
left side usually on the left side you
will find this fitting now this is a
push fitting that grips this tube so to
remove the push fitting first thing to
do is just to check that the collar on
the end of the push fitten turns freely
if it doesn't turn freely what you need
to do is just spray a bit of WD40 or
some other oil on there and wait a
little while once it's turning
freely push that collar towards the
front of the kayak and you should see
the joint
close once you've done that hold it
forward and pull the tube firmly and the
tube will come
out what you can now do is you can feed
the wire into the end of the tube and
then feed the other end of the wire into
the skag slider housing once that's done
we obviously need to put this fitting
back together you simply push the tube
back into the fitting Push It Forward
firmly until it won't go any further and
then gently pull back and the collar
should come open and grip the
tube thank you for visiting the SE car
in UK in the workshop Channel today we
are planning a whole series of videos
looking at different repairs and
retrofits so if there's anything you
would like to see please reach out get
in touch and we will see what we can do
anything that you saw involved in the
repairs today we do sell on the seai and
UK shop so please check that out if you
need anything thank you see you again
By Philip Clegg
With over two decades of working in the sea kayaking industry, Phil can be found on a daily basis coaching on the sea around Anglesey. That's when he's not researching and writing on all things sea kayaking.
