: received my plans for the 14'Great Auk. i am now in the process of planning
: out the cockpit size .i want it to be large enough to enter and exit
: easily. i have seen on some plastic production kayaks that they have
: oversized cockpit areas. i like this idea but i have a question on knee
: bracing and the impotance of them. has anyone any ideas ?

It seems that the largest size cocpit that you can get a decent skirt for is ~32" long inside. It may be possible to fit a whitewater skirt to a slightly larger size, but you'd need to check the dimension on some boats. If you are going to build the boat with a large cockpit, make it a keyhole style. Knee/thigh bracing is critcal to controlling the boat, especially in rough water. The keyhole design allows easy entry and exit, without compromising control. A good example of this in a 'glass boat is the cockpit design on the VCP Romany Explorer and Greenlander Pro.