Submitted: 01-22-2007 by leaf-peeper
I bought a used Alto as a spare boat for others to use. Reading these reviews, I knew what to expect regarding its tracking issue. The price was right; I bought it with thoughts that I’d likely need to put some sort of a skeg on it. My first paddle with the Alto reminded me of the Old Town Adventurer 125 my wife once had. The tracking was worse than mediocre, I knew the skeg would be needed right away. I used a Smarttrack rudder blade and homemade bracket that attached to the optional OEM rudder location. The coil spring on the Smarttrack rudder blade allowed easy deployment and a wedge cleat up near the cockpit kept the rudder (skeg) up when not in use. The boat tracked very well with the Smarttrack blade/skeg, but with the fixed blade position, proved difficult to turn. If I had spent the time and cut the blade length down some, I probably would have come up with a setup that would have provided decent tracking, but still turn well. There are better used boats out there to be had, ones that don’t this type of diddling around with. |