A light sport aircraft pilot reported gusty winds during landing caused a temporary loss of control and runway excursion.

Narrative

I was flying the plane to runway XX. Note the plane does not have any rudder pedals. Winds were 140 at 16 and the favoring runway XY was closed. I was directly on center line; stabilized; crossed the threshold around 57 knots at a 3 degree glideslope. Continuing to bleed off speed; I leveled off and pulled the plane pitch to about 4 degrees; bank 3 degrees right and touched down just a few feet off the ground; not hard just fairly normal; only to be immediately pop up by a gust of wind from the right at which time our speed was around 49 knots. My co-pilot and owner of the plane called for his flight controls and I released at which time the plane was slightly in air turned to the right and he quickly and smoothly returned it to the runway. When we touched down the plane was already turned off centerline by about 50 degrees to the right and the plane kept turning to the right despite his strong efforts to keep it straight and the plane went off the runway to the right. Ercoupes are known to have shimmy damper issues at times that can make them challenging to control in unusual windy conditions. We then turned around and rejoined the runway and let tower know immediately we were both fine and no damage to the aircraft and no services were needed. With the first touchdown; I see that I might have been able to flare a degree or two more and also have pushed the yoke forward a little sooner on touchdown before the gust caught under the wing to have sent us back into ground effect. It maybe have also been better to have kept the flight controls instead of exchanging them in such a critical moment and just settled it down myself a second time; but that is hard to say. As for the owner who took over; it is hard to say what could have been down differently as it truly seemed like he was putting in all the correction he could with the wind. Also note; the tower did announce later that the winds were then gusting 140 at 15-22 to another plane shortly thereafter and asked us if the wind had pushed us off which we confirmed.