phil,

sorry my comments came across as a buzz kill.

i think the point i was trying to get to is your body needs a certain fit to be comfortable. we try to marry that as best as possible with a boat that we like and think is beautiful.

to the extent that the original design does not work....as pointed out....you can change it. and that said, my perspective is that you can only go so far before you are doing what i call 'bastardizing' it.....in other words you don't like (and nobody else is likley to like) the end result.

in the case with the mark rogers night hawk....I did not feel there was really any significant room once i built the boat to change it up without destroying the aesthetic i wanted and others appreciated in the first place. i paddled it for a year and did all kinds of things playing with seat and even the shoes i wore....but the next phase if i wanted to do something was going to be taking a saw to the deck....and i decided it was just not going to 'work' (i already had the larger key hole cockpit btw)

that said, each situation is different. and its quite possible it may work out or you may be able to do something that you like and works. so the only thing i would add that may not have been put out there already.....is that if you are not able to get comfortable, you may want to use another boat to help you establish critical measurements/clearances that you need to have to be comfortable and confirm that your proposed modifications can get you to where you need to be before cutting into the hull. so the key thing for me was establishing what those parameters look like. for me, this looked like a series knee and feet heights and approproate off-set from the centerline (deck and hull) where my feet and knees needed to be to be comfortable based on a reference point (defined distance) from the seat center.

when i built my night heron....i did modify the deck vs the plans....but before doing that i knew what my modified deck needed to accomodate as part of the modification process.