: I have to disagree with Bill somewhat, as the defacto "standard" is
: the VCP ocean cockpit.

Not only used by Valley ! I've just come back from a club afternoon doing
seaboat rescue practice. I used a Valley Anas Acuta (one of the early ones,
just after VCP started making them from Geoff Blackford's design derived
from the Ken Taylor skin kayak), a P&H Icefloe (a Derek Hutchinson design)
and my own hybrid Squeedunk Cormorant made with the same size cockpit as
the Anas. It's really nice being able to swap around between boats without
having to take off the PFD and swap spraydecks every time. I was using an
off-the-shelf Reed Chillcheater deck with a roll-down bail hole (ideal for
rescue practice:).

I don't think P&H make many boats with Ocean cockpits nowadays, but a lot
of the older boats have them, and they are a close match for the VCP ones.
Nearest thing to a standard you will ever find, I think - I've found bigger
differences between keyhole cockpits from the same manufacturer on supposedly
the same model of boat (indeed, those who built my fibreglass boat got the
forward bulkhead in the wrong place because they asked me to measure from the
front rim of the cockpit on a boat they lent me, but it turned out that they
had changed to a bigger cockpit in the meantime ....)

Andy