Skeg
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In surfing, a skeg is a stabilizing strut or fin located at the rear of the surfboard. It was invented in 1935 by Tom Blake. A skeg has the effect of keeping the board moving forward in a controlled manner. It preceded the modern surfboard fin, which was developed in the late 1960s by George Greenough.
[edit] Earlier uses of a skeg
The name given to the directional stabilizer of a surfboard derives from the skeg of a boat or ship. Where a vessel's rudder is mounted on the centreline, it is usual to hang it on gudgeons and pintles, the latter being upright pins and the former, rings to fit round them. Together, they form a hinge. The lowest pintle is usually mounted below the rudder on an extension of the keel so that the toe of the rudder is protected from the sea bottom or anything passing under the ship. Without it, things like ropes are very prone to catch on the rudder. This sternward extension of the keel is the skeg. It used to be relatively small until screw propellers were introduced, when it had to reach below the screw and became a proportionately larger fitting protecting both screw and rudder from damage.
The word comes, originally, from Scandinavian languages. In Old Norse, "skegg" means beard. In modern Norwegian Bokmål and Nynorsk, it's "skjegg", in Swedish, it's "skägg", in Danish, it's "skæg".de:Skeg
