<p> Compensating for Wind</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>