My newly built Gentry Disko Bay has next-to-no freeboard in the aft - starting at the midway point of the cockpit. The poly skin has four good coats of oil paint and you can't make out any weave patterns. The fabic at the cockpit coaming is stapled tight to a baseplate. A good seal of Marine Goop is sandwiched in between the coaming and the plate. The coaming is screwed down bar tight to the coaming with no chance of leaking. I just bought a new Seals Shocker sprayskirt (my old Shocker was Aquaseal-ed to death and was leaking) that is very snug to my stomach and and fits the coaming tightly. I also have a tight tunnel on my drysuit.

YET - after an hour of rolling and playing in the waves, I had about 3/4" of water sitting in the bottom of the boat - enough to affect stability in the waves!!

My question is how much water do others get in their boats - especially those paddling "submarines" like mine? I do pretty much all my turning with aggressive edging (a technique that works incredibly well with my Point Bennett) so my cockpit is pretty much continuously underwater. Paddling in 3 ft waves just puts it that much more under water. With each strong paddle stroke the aft deck/rear coaming gets pushed to water level.

I'm going to make some small adjustments to my pump to allow it to get down between the seat slats but I'm curious if there's something I can do to reduce the amount of water getting into the boat OR is this just the norm and I'll have to live with?

Cheers,
Sean