[Udine219]

Originally Posted by JohnMckroidJr

The rudders are flexible and very forgiving if they accidentally are squashed for a brief moment -- it happens. I never had any damage issues. Some anglers have been upset if their rudder was warped. Mine was on the outback, and really don't think it affected my performance.

I used the larger sail rudder on my PA14's. Made a PVC pipe rudder guard that jammed up under the aft handrail to protect the rudder out of the water. I used a 2019 outback last year and when the included rudder protector accidentally got run over by a car, I just made it a point to slide the wheels in before I pulled the kayak fully out of the truck bed, so that the rudder never touched the ground. My only bitch about the outback rudder was that fishing line would jam up in it way too frequently. Sometimes I could shimmy back onto the stern of my kayak and reach under to get it free. Other times it was too rough offshore to do that, or I just could not get it free, so I had to cut or break the line off. Maybe my Outback was a lemon as I never had any issues with line on three different PA14 rudders.

+1