• Fair the drivetrain 
• Reinforce rudder mount and build a big rudder
• Rebuild the seat and move it back a bit. 

Also visible in the picture is a new rudder I was working on with integrated mounts that I was going to epoxy to the stern. I abandoned it in favor of making a different rudder to utilize the existing rudder mounting hardware. I hope it's heavy duty enough...

I ended up hacking the seat pan off of a perfectly good Optima hard shell recumbent seat (which was too short for me), and mounting it to the existing seat pan in the Kayak. I had to do some major surgery on the shell to get it to lean back far enough. It feels nice and comfy now.

In this picture the rudder is jammed into the mounting plate. I still need to bolt it in. The carbon fiber strips are on the other side.

I wasn't able to find any noodles, so I have decided to race this year without any stabilizers (!). 

This year was no exception. The race started with Dan, Jake and Steve sprinting ahead, and me pedaling hard and trying to keep my boat under control. I was able to catch up to Steve and pass him within a lap or so, and then started cranking to bridge the gap between me and Jake, with Steve hanging right on my rudder. Jake is hard to get around. He goes pretty fast in the straights, then slows way down in the corners, and he has those big amavons sticking about 8ft either side of the boat.	Picture by Richard Hodgkins
Picture by Richard Hodgkins	On the turns I would go way on the outside to try to get next to him and sprint past him in the straightaway way on the outside. Eventually I made it by him, and set my sights on Dan, who was a good quarter lap ahead by then. I would gain a little on him each lap, and finally was on his tail. Dan is even harder to pass than Jake, because every time I tried to pass, he would kick it up a notch.
Finally I had a bit of luck and Dan ran into traffic, and had to slow down to go around another boat. I was able to squeak ahead of him before the nest corner, then I gained more on him through the corner. With a lap or two left I was working as hard as I could to keep Dan from re-passing me. Finally it came down to the last straightaway to the finish line. Both Dan and I were yelling to Bob on shore to find out if it was really the last lap and cranking as hard as we could at the same time. I ended up beating Dan by a couple boat lengths. Fun.	Picture by Richard Hodgkins
I learned some things at this year's Hydrobowl. The most interesting thing was that when you turn a large rudder in a narrow monohull boat, it makes the boat lean into the turn. When the turn is long, the boat eventually rights itself, returning to vertical. When you move the rudder back the other way to straighten the boat out, it makes the boat lean the other way, which is toward the outside of the turn you are just completing. That feels like the boat is capsizing and is just downright scary.  Bill Goldthorpe had an interesting rudder, which he said corrected this behavior. Instead of having a single flat plate that went straight down into the water, he used two plates at a diverging angle (picture an upside down V). He said that this corrected the rudder induced leaning that he had experienced on his boat.
It was largely because of this phenomenon that I made the decision not to race the Necky HPB. Fortunately I was rescued by Peg Cipolla, who had some inflatable "Sea Wings" pontoons that I strapped to the side of the Kayak. I was able to push them down when I felt particularly tilted, and then they rode free of the water when I was going straight. It was still hard to go straight and fast, so this is probably not the ideal solution, but it did allow me to race!  An active stabilizer like on the wavebike would be the ideal solution for this boat. Stabilizer pontoon(s) would be easier though, and less complex.	Photo by Dan Grow
Picture by Peg Cippola	The Necky Kayak did turn really well and efficiently this year, as is evidenced by my 2K results. I did spend a lot of energy keeping the boat upright though, so if I could add stability without slowing the boat down, I'm confident that could do even better. I also learned a Kayak is a "wet boat". I was always nice and dry when riding the sidewinder catamaran. In the Necky Kayak, water shoots out of the top of the back side of the drive well at high speeds. A better seal will be needed to prevent that, as the boat gets a lot of water in it.

Also when the waves get choppy, water slops into the boat over the sides. I'll need to add some sideboards to reduce that effect. The new seat in the kayak is much more comfortable than last
year's model, but it still sits practically in the bottom of the boat, so anytime there is more than an
inch or so of water in the bottom, I'm wet. I would definitely need some type of bailing device for any open water venture I would undertake in this boat.