Given some recent posts regarding making flat decks on stitch-n-glue kayaks, I thought I'd throw in a couple of pennies' worth. My first kayak was a Pygmy Arctic Tern, which had the characteristic Pygmy peaked deck. In paddle-float re-entry practice, the paddle made contact with the deck only at that peak, and had the bungees pulling down on it on either side. The boat could still rock because the paddle wasn't securely attached. On my Outer Island, with a completely flat aft deck, the paddle is rock-solid. It's like you have an outrigger. I think that Pygmys as well as Eric Schade's Merganser and other designs would do well to make a flat or 3-paneled aft deck so that they have a flat center section to rest a paddle on for paddle-float self-rescues. I don't know how this affects you euro-paddlers, but it helps us narrow-bladed paddlers to have a flat deck. End rant.

Dean