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Its been a long time since i have been on the forum but I am finally back to working on the boat after about a 5 month hiatus. Currently the side plywood is on and one side of the bottom plywood is on.
I want to put a skeg that runs down the keel to help protect the bottom of the boat and to prevent sliding in turns.
Any suggestions?
My plan was to start the skeg at the most forward fram and have it run almost all the way to the transom, so it is only on the flattest area of the boat.

Any other thoughts on dimensions, application, etc would be great.

Pictures will be up soon

During our Zip build we installed a 54" skeg that terminates 24" from the transom. Maximum depth is two inches and we installed it after glassing the hull, so we could modify/remove it as necessary. We made it from mahogany, which has worked well since we tie up at the dock. If we regularly beached the boat, white oak would be a better choice of material.

It probably doesn't matter how far forward you carry the skeg, since much of it will be out of the water when the boat is planing, but you definitely don't want it going all the way back to the transom, to avoid disturbing the inflow of water to the prop. Old Mercury outboard manuals and several other sources seem to recommend terminating the skeg no closer than 18" from the transom.

Ours is probably deeper than it needs to be, and you can hear (and feel) the water cavitating around it in tight turns. We've considered reducing its height in steps to see how little we can get away with, and have also toyed with the idea of eliminating it altogether and installing a fin. Hope this info is useful.

-Mark Shipley

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A boat is just a wooden box with no right angles.