John,
I have seen your boat before but did not know it. I saw it some time ago on Chip's website (you are squatting down at the back hatch). Very nice job and the paint job is awesome, it looks flawless. With all the advice I received I have formulated a plan. I plan to sketch it up in a few days and I'll post what I am going to do. It actually will combine a stacked ply coaming with a vertical strip recess. I'll be able to adjust how far to recess it and at what points just as you were saying. I guess I could have the front hardly recessed and the back and rear portion of the sides totally recessed. Anyway this is something I'll be doing over the next few weeks so I make sure and post some pics. Thanks for the advice and info.

--Tony

: 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.