: I final got my Panache outfitted and in the water late last season and
: experienced some tremendous weathercocking when the wind was strong (15
: -20 mph). I couldn't bring the bow into the wind to save myself. I tried
: leaning to the point of nearly capsizing, sweep strokes and shifting my
: weight forward off the seat. Nothing worked. I'm considering putting a
: rudder on it this spring but before I do I wanted to hear if there are any
: other ways to solve the problem. Someone suggested weighting the bow but I
: can't bring myself to intentionally ADD weight to a kayak.

Wow! You've received a lot of conflicting opinions and solutions! I thought I'd throw in one more, mine. If you picture you in your kayak crosswise to the wind, there is an area presented to the wind that creates drag, a force applied by the wind. That drag force pushes you and the kayak sideways. The sideways movement of the hull through the water creates a lateral resistance force on the side of the hull pushing opposite in direction to the wind. Both of these forces can be represented as point forces acting at their respective centroids. If the centroids line up vertically with each other your kayak will not tend to turn (yaw). Now then, if your kayak is "leecocking" the wind force is in front of the lateral hull resistance force and a moment (rotation force) is created that will rotate the bow of the kayak downwind. So how can you reduce this leecocking tendency? Two ways. 1- Put more front keel in the water and/or less aft keel which will move the lateral center of resistance of the water on the hull forward. 2- Put more wind area (deck) aft and/or less forward which will move the wind drag aft. Adding ballast in front or moving the paddler forward will lower the front keel, raise the aft keel, lower the front deck and raise the aft deck, all help move the two centroids toward each other. Putting a sail on the rear deck (rudder in the up position) will help. Putting the rudder in the water or adding a skeg will make it worse (unless you have enough forward motion to create large enough lateral hydraulic forces, just don't stop paddling). Adding or removing keel or deck are not easy on a finished kayak. So I would first move the paddler forward and then add forward ballast if additional trim is needed. One more opinion from a NONmarine-architect.