Why You MUST have a skeg-hung rudder

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:00]The cool thing about skegs and the reason that I am such a proponent is one, it protects the rudder, and two, it it gives it the rudder so it has two bearings instead of one. If you lose your rudder, you are properly screwed.

[00:00:12]It is very difficult to make another rudder. People think you can take a door and like sew it onto a piece of stick and like shove it up the butt of the boat. That is complete honky, bro. You are going to break that off. When you're offshore, these forces are so big that you need something strong. You need something that can take a hit. I've gotten a freaking tree trunk stuck back here in between the prop and the skeg.

[00:00:36]I'm thinking it's going to bend up the prop, it's going to bend the strut, it's going to break off the rudder, or something like that. Nope, no problem at all. Didn't break anything. The boat was built to withstand that because it has a skeg, because it has a good strut, because it has two bearings here, you know. These boats are just built for taking that load.