Replacing a Skeg Cable with Weed Trimmer Line

A few weeks ago I noticed the skeg was a bit tough to deploy on my backup boat, a Romany Surf RM.  It has a steel cable and although I can move the skeg up and down, it was quite stiff.  Yesterday I checked it all out, and couldn’t find any kinks in the skeg wire or grit in the box, so I pulled the cable.  Sure enough, there was a slightly frayed edge about two feet into the cable.

I remembered someone mentioning that Ronnie at SKG had replaced a cable with the plastic wire from a weed trimmer, so I figured I’d give that a try. The largest round size at Home Depot was .095 and it looked pretty heavy duty.  Be careful to get the round stuff, not the line with funky edges.

I cut it to match the same length as the existing cable, put everything back together and surprise, surprise, it worked.  I haven’t tried it on the water yet, but will do so in the next week or so.  Here’s the line I used:

Trimmer line used for skeg cable replacement on a kayak.
Trimmer line used for skeg cable replacement on a kayak.