Tony,

Like Shawn said, the difference between the keyhole cockpit (like I did) and the ocean cockpit as in the plans is ingress and egress. With the keyhole you sit in the seat first, then pull your feet in. With the ocean cockpit, you slide in feet first (and I'm not the right guy to comment further on a comparison as I have no experience in a ocean cockpit.)
As to recessing my cockpit, I'm looking to doing it similar to Shawn's approach with a couple of exceptions, however I'm still in the conceptual stages as this is a wintertime project (I don't have a spare boat and I don't want it out of service for that long in the middle of the summer). My plan is to not cut and lower the whole cockpit, but rather to leave it attached at the front, (cutting like Shawn did around but only around 80% or 90% of the perimeter), and pivoting the coming down so that aft edge is flush with the deck (or maybe a little below), and then filling in the gap like Shawn is doing. I'll have to post pic's when I get that far...
Here's the boat at R2K2 last Aug when it was new. (That's me in the white shirt). And, here is a link with another view of it -- http://www.nwlink.com/~chips/R2K2/images/43.jpg .

-John D.