Cant speak for Kudzu, but when I put hatches in my baidarka it was for two reasons:
First for future repairs, between the two hatches and the cockpit rim I can reach my arm inside any part of the hull, to say split a broken stringer, sew a patch onto the skin, or to easily replace a deck-line at the far end of the boat. (slightly off topic, but I find a webcam hooked up to a laptop makes a great scope for doing 'blind' work inside the hull)
Secondly, it makes loading cargo super fast and easy. Basically all the bags go in the cockpit, and are shoved forward or aft to the hatch, then I can reach in and push them to the ends, without having to use a paddle to shove them in or a rope to retrieve them. I built mine with a pair of full length floorboards that greatly help this. End result is I could have my boat loaded and on the water faster than the people with fiberglass hulls bulkheaded hulls.

Photos of my setup here: http://dbynoe.blogspot.com/search/label/Sage

: Hi Jeff,

: It looks very nice but
: what is the purpose of a hatch in a SOF? Or do you have bulkheads
: installed and in that case, how did you do that?

: Greetings from the Netherlands
: Daan Daniels