I thought I had this whole thing figured out, but there are so many creative ideas out there...I was going to do the T-nut, but didn't like how it sacrificed interior room. I ended up drilling holes (gasp!) the way traditional yaks do. I have been trying to figure out how to add larger footpads and a Guzzler footpump. I want to be able to stretch out my legs, so a bulkhead mount will only work if I place it the distance plus the thickness of the pump. Alas, this will make it operable for people with my leg length only. Perhaps I shouldn't worry about who else might use the boat and mount it on a rigid bulkhead. My other thought was bolting a movable bulkhead to the footpads so the footpump will always be the same distance from the footpads. Is it wirth the hassle?

Dan

: I just had a revelation (read: brain-fart) about footbraces, especially with
: regards to people like me with size 12 clod-hoppers. Since some of us
: don't bolt our Yakima or Keeper footbraces through the side of the hull,
: choosing instead to mount them via T-nuts, is there any good reason they
: couldn't be mounted on the lower hull or deck instead? My thinking is that
: the rails of those standard footbraces take up about an inch total from
: the width of the inside of the kayak. If you were to glue the footbraces
: to the deck, or in the case of a more hard-chined boat, to the floor, I
: think you'd gain some real estate for your toes. You would have to put a
: plate on the supplied footrest pad to gain some extra surface area for
: your foot, like someone here posted a picture of a few weeks ago.

: Of course there's still the method of using a couple of foam blocks as
: footbraces (or a U) against the bulkhead to gain footroom, but this idea
: came to me as a way to still have the standard bolt-in footrests for use
: by others as well.

: Dean