My venerable FG touring kayak (made by Lincoln J Hales of WA circa 1978) was built with one bulkhead behind the seat. With no front bulkhead, I could lay down inside the boat and stretch out with my head nestled on the seat! For loading the back compartment, the seat back is removable and is the only hatch cover. It fastens in place with wing nuts which are tedious but effective. It is large enough to pass the 2-burner Coleman stove test (the test is 'does it fit through the hatch?') and will allow the paddler to stuff a Cascade Designs 30 size Baja bag through it if you flatten it slightly into an ellipse. This bulkhead hatch design should be fairly easy to incorporate into almost any kayak. Note that the stern of the boat is almost as far from the cockpit as the bow and is also hard to reach/pack. Consider bringing a small dowel with a hook attached for retreiving stuck bags (or tape a hook to your break down paddle). I put a bulkhead in the front of my boat with a 6" Beckson deck hatch for access - a bit small but it works - I use it for smaller and heavier stuff that doesn't require dry bags.

The May 2001 issue has an article by Rob Lesser on doing self-supported (no gear raft) whitewater expeditions. These folks have major issues with lack of space for gear and have to be extremely efficient with every cubic inch of their 9'-11' WW kayaks. A sidebar in the article has a clever solution to the problem of the footbraces blocking access to the bow of the kayak re-using the side rails from the bulkhead footbrace. The BH footbrace plate and its crossbar support are removed permanently, and the side rails (typically 1-1/4"x1/8" aluminum strips) are drilled so Keepers or Yakima adjustable footbraces can be bolted to them. The side rails are then put back on their mounting bolts which are on the side of the hull about even with the front of the cockpit. This makes the fastening knobs easy to reach so the new foot brace assembly can be removed during loading/unloading. There probably are a number of clever ways to avoid drilling the hull for the bulkhead head mounting bolts in a strip or S&G kayak.

A question for Julie - its been over 15 years since I lived in Montana/Wyoming (Yellowstone, really), but I seem to recall that the Missouri was fresh water. Wouldn't a filter, iodine and/or extra stove fuel been lighter than 18 gallons of water (144 pounds by my rough calculation)??? Must have been one heavy Coho!

: I had three large dry bags (the one in front was a tapered one), a
: thermarest, a sleeping bag (in a dry sack) and a quart water bottle in the
: bow of the Coho-- and I know there was wasted space in the bow compartment
: that I couldn't use because I couldn't reach it to tuck things in. By
: contrast, we had the bow of the Tern, with a hatch, loaded with more
: stuff. Using one really large dry bag isn't the answer, unless you could
: "custom tailor" it to match the shape of the hull.

: Overall, I would rank the side-mounted footpegs as #3 or 4 down the list of
: "frustrations encountered in loading the bow without a hatch."
: .. behind distance (my arm can reach to the front of the footpegs, but
: that doesn't help much when trying to straighten out a bag that's lying
: crooked so its neighbor won't fit right and the thermarest won't go into
: the spot on top!) and friction (bags against hull, bags against
: bags)...and possibly behind the joy of trying to do all this when the
: interior of the boat is hot and too dark to see what I'm doing. I got
: everything loaded in every day, and by the third day had myself trained to
: check the footpegs to see if they'd been knocked out of position so I
: wasn't surprised when I launched.... but, comparatively, loading the
: Arctic Tern with it's hatches was faster and easier... and I was able to
: tuck more stuff into the equavalent space. It was enough to convince me to
: cut a hatch on the front of the Coho.

: Of course, none of this is an issue if you're not planning long trips...even
: with a couple luxury items (folding couch & table), and the standard
: complement of camping gear, most of the storage space on this 9 day trip
: was occupied by water and food....18 gallons of water and 18 quarts of
: gatorade take up a lot of space....

: Julie Kanarr