If you read the title of this blog and clicked on it I'm assuming you have experienced this one. You're out in the ocean chasing runners and the ski feels like it has a mind of it's own. No matter how hard you stomp on the rudder it either won't turn or in other cases won't stop turning and a lot of the time the lack of steering leads to either a ski full of water, your ski pointing across the wind or you next to your ski rather than in it.
First things first, you're not alone and plenty of other people are reading this blog too (I hope....). So to correct it we need to first understand why its happening and the short answer is "water pressure".
When you're sitting in your ski, a portion of the hull is actually below the water and pushing against it. The water is pushing back against the hull and there is enough pressure there to float you. Once we start moving the hull is pushing through the water and if we are going straight there is an equal amount of pressure on each side of the hull. In effect holding the ski straight.
When we catch a runner this doesn't change. We might be moving faster and the runner is pushing us instead of us paddling but the water we are moving through isn't moving so pushes back against the hull as it moves through it.
So, if we go paddling down that big wave and spear the nose into the runner in front of us, we will see the nose of the ski bury into the water and now instead of the water only pushing on the bottom of the hull it is now pushing on the entire nose. If you went in straight then the pressure is even on all sides and that water is effectively giving the nose of your ski a bear hug, stopping it from moving one way or the other. You can push the rudder but the rudder can't make enough force to push the nose of the ski sideways through all that water.
If however you crashed into that wave in front on an angle already, then we go from not being able to change direction, to not being able to stop changing direction. Because we are already on an angle the leading side of the hull is going to be pushing into the water and the water is going to push back. This means one side of the nose is going to be pushed while the other side isn't. This imbalance in pressure turns the ski further away from the pressure and makes the angle you were on increase. As the angle increases, the surface area the water can push against increases and the pressure goes up even more. Round you go, too much pressure pushing the nose around for the little rudder at the back to fight against.
Now this might all sound a little bit dramatic but the principle of pressure against the nose of the ski stopping or making the ski turn is the key to understanding the solution.
To have control of the ski you need to keep as much of the nose of the ski dry as possible. The amount of pressure from the rudder is a set value, it can't win when you pick a fight with the ocean. If you can keep the nose dry by staying high on your runners you will find that turning is easy and if you really find the sweet spot you might be surprised with how manoeuvrable your ski really is.
Stay high, stay dry and let turning be easy. Stop trying to crash through waves in front of you and start moving left and right along your runner, instead of down it.
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