After a long hiatius (over a year), I'm back on the kayak. It's time to cut the hatches. I've procrastinated long enough. Here I'm running a line from the end along the centerline. This way I know where the centerline is as I plot the hatch on the deck. You can also see that I've used a bungee cord and some leftover pipe insulation from my "roof rack" to keep the deck tight against the stand.

Another view of the centerline. It doesn't look like it's on, but it is. Trust me.

And the plotted hatch. I used masking tape to mark lines to measure from, then more masking tape that I could actually draw the lines on. For reference, this is the back hatch. I used Nick Schade's Guillemot offsets, for the most part. I took an inch off the width measurements (each side) for this back hatch. You can see the book in the background. Once I had the two strips of tape down the middle, and the top and the bottom, it was easy to measure the width offsets. Then I just taped the lines with wide masking tape so I could then use a straight edge to draw the lines on the tape to use as a guide when gulp cutting the hatches out.

Another picture of the same thing. You can again see the book with the hatch offsets on the right.

Same basic process for the front hatch, only this time I stopped to take some pictures along the way. The top strip (closest to the cockpit) of blue tape marks where I think I'll stick a bulkhead. The next strip indicates an edge of the hatch. The bottom strip of blue tape indicates the bottom edge of the hatch. The line of masking tape marks one measuring point along the centerline.

A closer view, this time with a square along the centerline. This is how I got the tape at least close to being straight.

And the marked-up front hatch.