Steve Killing's "Endeavour" as shown in Ted Moores "KayakCraft" looks like it was designed and built to strip straight through the cockpit as you describe. There is a smooth transition in the cockpit area between the arcs of the front and rear decks.

In my CLC West River the change in arc was probably too much to do that. Right in front of the cockpit the deck has an arc with a radius of 16" while just behind the cockpit the arc has a 24" radius. The front arc takes maybe an inch or more material to cover width-wise. In plywood that isn't a problem, but when I put my strip deck on it, the planking from the front and rear panels wouldn't line up at all. I ended up cutting each back an inch and inserted a contrasting piece to hide the mismatch a little.

So, like so many things about this business, it depends... .

Pete,
in Snohomish