> I’m about to re deck my Osprey double. I want the new cockpits closer
> together than Pygmy’s original plans. (At risk of valuing style over
> substance, my wife and I are always in “sync” and prefer being close
> enough to touch... even when we’re paddling) To trim the 20’ boat, since
> I’m 250#, and she’s 125#, we put the ice chest just behind her front seat
> and load the bow with stuff, rarely ever using the stern hatch.

I'm going to suggest that you set up your boat so that you can not only get closer, but also switch positions. As long as you want to get close enough to touch, consider the possibility of the wife massaging your stiff neck muscles if they get cramped. Or, it could keep you away from that cooler. Besides, as they say at the Iditarod `if you aren't the lead dog, the view never changes} Of course the down side here is that if you sluff off in your paddling your wife will see.

> The boat has no tendency to “weathercock” in beam wind conditions of ten
> to fifteen kts.(more than that, I don’t know since we head for shore).

An excellent idea. I assume the cooler is well stocked for these shore excursions.

> I’d like to know how the placement of the cockpits (center of buoyancy?)
> will affect the boat’s behaviour in beam winds. Apparently designers build
> boats to turn into the wind slightly rather than downwind. Since the bows
> of kayaks are invariably higher than the sterns and sea kayaks have so
> little rocker, it seems the bow would catch more wind and turn downwind if
> the paddler was positioned in the center. I can’t seem to find any source
> that describes the effect and how to control it.

Don't worry too much about this. Canoes ride much higher and have more `sail area' as a result. Even so, the condition is correctible with a shift in the loading of the cargo, or a shift in the paddler's position. In a canoe it is easier to move forward or back a few inches, than it is in a kayak. This is because the canoe is open and paddlers can kneel. (The position is a pain, but it is easily done.) On a kayak your position is more constrained by the opening for the cockpit. Solution: change the cockpit and make it larger. Since this affects canoes a lot, and kayaks only a little, check out a few books on canoes for more info. The actual surface area exposed to the wind is not as vcritical as the placement of the load. If the bow is deeper in the water ( heavier) the stern will rise and bob around. The boat will pivot around the heavy bow, effectively pointing the boat into the wind. The change in balance does not have to be dramatic.

If you thought I was JUST teasing about putting you in the front, consider this. With your weight in the front the bow will be heavier, and the boat will display that tendency to turn into the wind. On days with little wind you can sit back and cuddle, but on windy days you'll just have to scoot forward a bit. Your body weight is probably the largest moveable weight in the boat, so plan around that.

> Apparently everybody
> talks about “Weathercocking”, but nobody ever does anything about it.
> (pardon the paraphrasing.)

Probably because each hull design requires its own answer to the problem. You can generalize in a design, but when you get on the water and try to balance two paddlers of diverse weight in a small boat the `Ideal' design based on average paddlers needs to be modified.

It is like balancing a 1 foot ruler on your finger. If everything is perfect, you should balance it at the 6 inch mark. But tape a silver dollar at the 8 inch mark and a paper dollar at the 4 inch mark, and even though you have 1 dollar on each half, your balance point is going to shift - and I don't know how far !

Best and fastest method (for canoes, Kayaks and rulers) is to simply try it once.

By the way, your paraphrase is utterly appropriate. Ben Franklin loved to sail, particularly in small boats.

> thanks again everyone for being such a great resource.

You are welcome :)

Now, some ideas to consider:

Don't rip off the old deck. Take a pair of long straightedges ( anything from excess sedar strips to straight 2x4s) and connect them so they are parallel and 3 inches further apart than the opening you want for your widest cockpit opening. For example, if your biggest cockpit opening is 20 inches wide, make these 23 inches apart. for 19 inch openings, they would be 22 inches apart. Measure, this don't guess.

Center these parallel straightedges on your deck and use them to mark lines on the deck with a pencil or an awl. Mark from 1 1/2 inches behind the rear cockpit to 1 1/2 inches ahead of the front cockpit. After making that mark, get a 1/4 inch thick scrap and using it as a spacer, run your pencil or awl arond this form again to make a second line 1/4 inch inside the first.

Now cut between these lines and remove just this section of your deck. Use a plane or coarse sandpaper on a belt sander to open up the hole to those nice straight lines. you scribed. On the piece you removed, sand or plane the edges to the scribe lines. When done, you'll have a re-useable deck part which, if looked at from above, will appear to be a rectangle. If you tried to re-install this piece it would be 1/4 inch short of filling on all sides.

If you have the original forms or design for the original deck beams, trace them onto plywood and make temporary deck beams for constructing the new deck insert.

Get a piece of 3/4 inch wood that is anywhere from 1 inch to 2 inches wide and with a router or table saw rabbet one edge so that you cut in 1/4 inch from the left and also from the right, leaving a ridge 1/4 inch wide and 1/4 inch high. I cant draw a picture here, but looking at a cross section of te wood, if you start with stock that is 3/4 by 2 inches, and stand that on edge, the left edge is 1 3/4 inches tall, the center of the piece is 2 inches tall and 1/4 inch wide, and the right edge is again 1 3/4 inches tall. These pieces of wood are both reinforcement, and ledges for mounting the new deck(s), and for re- mounting the old one if you wish. You'll need pieces for both sides. Put some epoxy in one of the rabbets and glue it to the edge of the hull opening. Clamps, or a few small screws will hold it in place until the resin sets. The second rabbet on this board serves as a ledge for supporting the new deck. The wood that was left bwtween those rabbets is a 1/4 inch wide decorative stripe on the deck. (You may want to chose the type of wood for this piece to get a nice color here)

The new deck panel can be made of plywood (3 mm to 6mm or 1/4 inch) if the curvature is not too severe, or, you can fill the opening with strips. Since the sides of the opening are straight and parallel, you should be able to fit strips inot this opening with ease. Get the right length ( measure, and measure again) Cut a few strip to this size and lay them on temporary deck beams or frames to get the right curvature. Gravity should hold these in place. You might not need staples. Dry fit everything then take it apart. Line the rabet edge with w sheet of Saran wrap, and drop some old newspaers into the hull to keep drips from spoiling your finished interior. Edge glue the strips, and reassemble. When it is set, fiberglass the deck panel in the usual fashion. You might want to make 2 or three decks now. If they are plywood they are fast and cheap to make.

Now take your kayak down to the water, load it up with paddlers, cooler, and other gear in the positions you thought would be good. At this time the new decks are NOT installed, and you have a craft that looks like a kayak with a huge cockpit, or a slim decked canoe. Move around in the boat until you thing you have the balance and trim you want. Note where you are at. Put a dab of masking tap on the edge of the cockpit, and mark on it with a pen.

I think this seat-of-the-pants approach will get you the balance and trim that suits your personal conditions much better (and much faster) than any number of computations and calculations. This is a trial and error approach where the trials are fast, and the errors are cheap to fix. After you get the boat out of the water use those marks as guides for where you will cut the new holes for the new cockpits.

If you like, you can take plenty of tape and different colored pens, and mark positions for a solo cockpit, or an arrangement where you are in front, and another arrangement where the cooler is in front, and your wife is in the middle.

Any time you want to go back to the original, you can re mount it. any time you want to go with an optional arrangement, you'll have a spare, customized deck.

With NO deck, you can re do the interior of the kayak with foam and converti it to a sit-on-top design. One of the Hawaiian builders who frequents this board did something similar and had very good results.

When you make the new cockpit coamings, make them as close to identical with the existing ones as you can. That way you should be able to use the same sprayskirts regardless of which deck center you have installed.

Hope some of these ideas help Paul Jacobson