Remember how on Saturday I was having to hold full right rudder just to go in a straight line? Well, today we went out for a long paddle on the lake, getting to know the course of the Rochester Open Water Challenge. The lake wasn’t bad, and I was riding Dan’s wash the whole way, but the rudder problem was getting worse and worse. Just was we were getting back towards the beach, Dan wanted everybody to go into the Bay because that’s where he’s planning to take the race, but my foot was cramping up from holding so much rudder for about 7.5 miles, so I started heading for the beach.
I was about 300 metres from the group when my rudder when “ping” and I felt the cable fall onto my right foot. Oh, that is bad. Here I am, trying to ride the surf to shore when I’ve got full left rudder on. I raised my rudder, and that’s not much better – I remember when I bought this boat finding a review on-line that said that the biggest problem with it was that it was totally uncontrollable without a rudder, and so therefore not safe for a sea kayaking trip. Well, it took a lot of dragging my paddle on one side, sweeping on the other, and then repeating the process on the other side, but I got into shore.
And when I looked, as well as the cable coming off the rudder pedal, the foot peg had completely “burst through” the channel that it’s supposed to ride in. No doubt it was this that make the rudder misbehave. Unfortunately, there is no way in hell to fix this without a replacement part, and Baycreek doesn’t carry them, so I’m not going to have this boat working for Wednesday night.