I've done a little camping in my kayak. I was surprised how hard it is to fit gear through the hatch openings; and the hatches on my S&G boat are pretty big. If I were going to skip deck hatches then I think I would skip bulkheads too. Jamming gear through a small bulkhead hatch would not be fun. On the other hand, sliding gear into the ends of the boat from an unobstructed cockpit sounds great. I like the "block/closeline" concept and there are builders here who have done that. I would use floatbags/drybags filled with gear for my reserve flotation.

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