Skeg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A skeg is a sternward extension of the keel of boats and ships which have a rudder mounted on the centre line. In more recent years, the name has been used for a fin on a surf board which improves directional stability and to a moveable fin on a kayak which adjusts the boat's centre of lateral resistance.
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[edit] Origins
The word originates in the Scandinavian word for beard; in Old Norse, skegg. In modern Norwegian Bokmål and Nynorsk, it appears as skjegg, in Swedish, it is skägg and in Danish, skæg. The Norwegian pronunciation of the letter combination sk is as in the English sh. The word is related to the English shaggy. It also appears in the English place name Skegness - 'beard point', from the way in which tombolos form, towards the nearby Gibraltar Point. Here, the English pronunciation reflects a probable Danish origin, which pronounces the sk letter combination as an English speaker would expect. However, 'Skegness' is pronounced with an un-Danish hard 'g'.
[edit] In boats and ships
Where a vessel's rudder is mounted on the centre-line, it is usual to hang it on gudgeons and pintles, the latter being upright pins and the former, rings to fit round them. Together, they form a hinge. The lowest pintle is usually mounted below the rudder on an extension of the keel so that the toe of the rudder is protected from the sea bottom or anything passing under the ship. Without it, things like ropes are very prone to catch on the rudder. This somewhat beard-like sternward extension of the keel is the skeg. It used to be relatively small until screw propellers were introduced, when it had to reach below the screw and became a proportionately larger fitting protecting both screw and rudder from damage.
In more modern installations, with more than one screw, a fitting supports each propeller shaft just ahead its screw. This is usually called a shaft bracket but the part of it which extends below the shaft bearing to protect the lower part of the propeller is also a skeg. Similarly, the protective projection of the drive casing, below the axis of the propeller of an outboard motor is another form of the skeg.
Where a yacht is designed with a fin keel, it will normally, also have a skeg-mounted rudder. This link shows the profile of such a boat. This type of skeg is pictured at the bottom of the same linked page.
[edit] Surfing
In the vocabulary of surfers, a skeg is a stabilizing strut or fin located at the rear of the surfboard. It this connection, it was introduced in 1935 by Tom Blake. A surf board skeg improves the board's fundamental directional stability, giving easier control of its direction by varying the surfer's weight distribution on the board. The skeg preceded the modern surfboard fin, a smaller, more hydrodynamically efficient version, which was developed in the late 1960s by George Greenough.
[edit] Kayaks
A skeg is employed in the type of kayak used on more open water such as the sea. Its purpose and use are rather different from those of the surfing skeg. In the kayak, the amount of the exposure of the skeg to the water; therefore of its effect on the position of the boat's centre of lateral resistance (c.l.r.) is feely variable by the crew. This varies its relationship with the effect of the wind on the upper parts of the combined boat and crew. In more conventional calculations, this would be the centre of effort of the sail area (c.e.). In still water, where the wind is pushing the boat sideways, a contrary force (lateral resistance) develops, resisting that movement. If the central points of the application of those two forces coincide, the boat moves steadily sideways. Otherwise, it rotates in the horizontal plane, until they are in line. By varying the c.l.r., it is possible to control the boat's attitude towards the wind. Irregular flowing movement of the water complicates the issue. This link explains its subtleties in respect of the kayak skeg.
[edit] Yorkshire dialect
In Hull, a city on the eastern coast of Yorkshire, UK, 'skeg' is often used to mean 'look' - usually as a noun, but sometimes as a verb. Hence, "Gis a skeg," meaning, "Could I please look?"; and (as a verb) "Skeg out the state a that daft silly git," meaning "Have you noticed the eccentric nature of that person over there?"
[edit] External link
This site shows the fins on a surf kayak, a boat combining some of the features of a kayak with some of a surf board.
