David,

I was somewhat apprehensive about joining my hull and deck as well, but give a lazy man a tough job and he'll find an easy way to do it .
I used sheer clamps in the very tips of my baidarka because idea of trying to tape the sheers in the very narrow bow of this design didn't appeal to me either. I made a very small end pour using a dam, that would facilitate the drilling for my carrying toggle, then made sheer clamps from cove moulding. I epoxied the shearclamps to the hull from the tip of the bow to about 24" back from the bow(where I could easily reach with tape). Due to the fact that the deck on my kayak is quite flat at the bow I had to do vey little planing on the sheer clamps to get a good fit. I gave all the sheerclamps a good coat of unthickened epoxy to water proof them. Prior to putting the deck in place I hot glued small wedges on the deck to guide the deck and hull into place and ensure a perfect fit. After roughing the underside of the deck along the sheer, I used thickened epoxy on the sheerclamps and on top of my small end pour, layed the deck in place, taped everything in place cleaned up any dripping and oozing epoxy and let it cure. I then did small tack welds with thickened epoxy between the wedges used to align the hull and deck. Once the tack welds had cured I popped off the hot glued wedges cleaned up any hot glue residue. Because all the hard to reach areas were already joined with the shearclamps it was a piece of cake to reach in and tape the seams. I just layed the tape in dry and wet it out with a brush, no mucking with dripping tape or brushes on sticks.
I was a job I thought was going to be nerve-wracking, but it went very smoothly and wasn't at all difficult.

Don't sweat the small 'stuff'!

Ken