What Is A Bulkhead And Why Your Kayak Should Have At Least One!

Copyright © April 2026 by CanoeSport Outfitters | Est. 1992

When most people think about kayak safety, their mind goes straight to the life jacket — the bright orange vest strapped to their chest. And yes, a PFD is essential. But there's another safety feature built into many kayaks that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves, one that could mean the difference between a manageable capsize and a desperate, exhausting struggle. It doesn't move. It doesn't deploy. It doesn't require batteries or training to activate. It just sits there, quietly doing its job, every single time you're on the water.

It's called a bulkhead, and if you paddle a kayak — especially on open water — you need to understand exactly what it is, what it does, and why its presence or absence matters profoundly.

What Is a Bulkhead?

A bulkhead is a watertight wall, or partition, built into the interior of a kayak. Most kayaks that have them feature two: one positioned just behind the cockpit toward the stern, and one positioned just past your feet toward the bow. These walls divide the kayak into three distinct sections: the rear storage compartment (accessed through the rear hatch), the cockpit area where you sit, and the front storage compartment (accessed through the front hatch).

Example of a bulkhead behind the seat of an Eddyline Sandpiper 120.

Bulkheads are typically made from a firm closed-cell foam that is bonded and sealed to the interior walls of the hull in plastic boats. In composite kayaks – those made from fiberglass, kevlar or carbon fiber— the bulkhead will often be made of the same material as the boat. The key word in all of this is sealed. A bulkhead is only as good as its seal. If water can seep around the edges — and over time, it often can — the bulkhead loses its effectiveness. This is why checking and maintaining your bulkheads is an important part of maintaining your kayak. At CanoeSport Outfitters we think it’s important enough that if you purchase your kayak from us we’ll inspect it for free and even reseal it for you as part of our Bow To Stern Maintenance Program!

You'll find bulkheads most commonly in sea kayaks, touring kayaks, and higher-end recreational kayaks. Cheaper recreational kayaks and many whitewater kayaks omit them entirely. If you're shopping for a kayak and you plan to paddle 100 yards or more from shore the presence of proper bulkheads should be near the top of your checklist.

What Does a Bulkhead Do?

A bulkhead serves two related but distinct purposes: it provides flotation, and it creates relatively dry storage compartments. These two functions are deeply connected and understanding how they work together explains why bulkheads are so important.

After tipping over, without a bulkhead in the front, the bow of the kayak sinks below the surface making any kind of rescue nearly impossible. Photo credit NRS Dave Aharonian

Flotation. When a kayak capsizes and fills with water, what happens? Without bulkheads, the entire interior of the kayak floods. A standard recreational kayak is roughly ten to fourteen feet long and holds a significant volume. Fill that volume with water and you have a boat that weighs hundreds of pounds — sluggish, and almost completely submerged. Trying to drag that toward shore while treading water in a lake or river is an exhausting and potentially impossible task.

Now picture the same scenario with bulkheads installed. When the kayak capsizes, water floods the cockpit — but that's where it stops. The sealed bulkheads at the bow and stern trap air inside the front and rear compartments. Those pockets of trapped air provide buoyancy. The kayak floats. Not upright, necessarily, and not high in the water, but it floats. It remains near the surface. It remains manageable.

This is the most critical function of a bulkhead. It turns a swamped kayak from a sinking liability into a floating asset that you can cling to, swim alongside, or learn to re-enter without returning to shore to do so.

Relatively dry storage. The same sealed compartments that trap air for flotation also create protected spaces for your gear. Hatches open to access these compartments, and when closed and sealed, they keep the interior reasonably dry. This is where you store your sleeping bag on a camping trip, your extra clothes, your food, your first aid kit. "Relatively dry" is the operative phrase — hatch covers are not perfectly watertight, and you should always put anything that truly cannot get wet inside a dry bag within the hatch compartment. But the bulkhead compartment provides a meaningful layer of protection that the open cockpit simply cannot.

Why Bulkheads Matter: The Safety Case

The flotation function of a bulkhead isn't just a convenience — it is a fundamental safety feature, and its absence changes the risk profile of paddling dramatically.

Consider this scenario. You're paddling alone on a lake, a mile from shore. The wind has picked up. A wave catches you off guard, and you capsize. You perform your wet exit — you get out of the kayak safely and surface next to it. So far, so good. Now what?

If your kayak has bulkheads, the bow and stern compartments are full of air. The kayak is floating, sitting mostly above the waterline, relatively easy to grab and hold onto. In a best-case scenario, you might be able to perform a self-rescue — re-entering the kayak from the water, pumping it out, and paddling to safety. In a worst-case scenario, you can at least hang onto the kayak and kick toward shore, using it as a flotation device while you work your way back.

This is an example of a kayak with 2 bulkheads floating in the water. (Photo from South Bend Tribune, Gil Hidalgo)

If your kayak has no bulkheads, the entire interior floods the moment you capsize. You're now in the water next to a kayak that is almost completely submerged. It weighs, conservatively, two hundred or more pounds once waterlogged. You cannot re-enter it. You cannot easily drag it. You can barely keep it close enough to be useful. In cold water, where hypothermia becomes a threat within minutes, clinging to a floating kayak or thrashing next to a sunken one can result in two very different outcomes.

There's a question that instructors sometimes ask students during safety talks: "How far can you swim pulling two hundred pounds?" The answer, for most people, in cold water, is not very far. The point isn't to scare people into not wanting to paddle — it's to make the stakes of this seemingly mundane structural feature absolutely clear.

Bulkheads also matter enormously during rescues. The standard T-rescue — where a paddling partner flips the capsized kayak upright, drains the water, and helps the swimmer back in —works far more efficiently when the kayak has bulkheads. A boat with bulkheads can be lifted, tilted, and drained of water relatively quickly because only the cockpit flooded. A boat without bulkheads holds far more water and becomes nearly impossible to drain effectively in deep water. Rescuers who try to assist a kayaker with a fully flooded, bulkhead-free boat find themselves dealing with an unwieldy obstacle rather than a manageable vessel.

Checking and Maintaining Your Bulkheads

Like any safety feature, bulkheads require maintenance to remain effective. The most common failure point is the seal where the bulkhead meets the hull. In plastic kayaks, the polyethylene hull flexes over time, and bulkhead seals can crack or pull away from the interior walls. In foam bulkhead designs, the adhesive or sealant bonding the foam to the hull can deteriorate with age, UV exposure, and regular use.

The fix is straightforward: inspect your bulkheads regularly by looking inside the hatch compartments with a flashlight. Check the perimeter of each bulkhead where it meets the hull. Run your finger around the seal and feel for gaps, cracks, or soft spots. If you find compromised areas, a variety of sealants can be used to re-seal the bulkhead. We recommend Lexel which can be found in most hardware stores. It's a simple repair that takes minutes and preserves everything the bulkhead is there to do.

You can also do a quick field test: fill the cockpit with water (or simply note whether water that gets in the cockpit migrates into the hatch compartments). If the hatch compartments stay dry, your seals are holding. If water migrates through, it's time to reseal.

Keep hatch covers clean and pliable as well. Rubber hatch covers that have dried out and cracked won't seal properly, and while that's primarily a gear-soaking problem, it also affects how quickly and easily water can migrate through the system.

Bulkheads and Boat Selection

If you're purchasing a kayak for use on anything beyond calm, protected flatwater — a lake where shore is always a few easy paddle strokes away — choose a boat with bulkheads. This applies especially if you plan to paddle on large lakes, coastal waters, or anywhere that a capsize may result in more than a few minutes swim to shore.

When evaluating a used kayak, always open the hatches and inspect the bulkheads before you buy. A kayak that looks great on the outside but has failed bulkhead seals needs repair before it's safe to use in open water. Don't assume — check.

Conclusion

The bulkhead is humble by design. It doesn't announce itself. It doesn't require you to do anything to activate it. Most paddlers go years without really thinking about it at all. But the moment you capsize in open water — really capsize, in conditions, far from shore — the bulkhead becomes the most important piece of equipment in your kayak.

It keeps your boat afloat when the water wants to swallow it. It gives you something to hold, to swim with, to eventually climb back into. It makes rescue possible. Without it, a kayak becomes dangerously hard to manage in an emergency; with it, a manageable situation remains manageable.

If you have a bulkhead in your kayak, bring it to CanoeSport Outfitters for an inspection. If you purchased the kayak from us the inspection and basic resealing is free! If you purchased it elsewhere, we’ll inspect it for free and for a minimal fee, we’ll reseal it for you.

CanoeSport Outfitters | “Where Paddling Is A Priority”

Phone: 515-961-6117 or 515-339-5582 | Email: info@canoesportoutfitters.com

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