.....so now what would I do differently next time

I learned a lot from building this boat.  I suspect there will be a next one at some point and there are definitely things I would do differently.

1. I would not build a 10 panel plywood boat.  For the amount of effort required I could have done a strip boat.
2. I would  be more careful reinforcing and filleting before removing the wires.  At the stems there were some serious compound bends that made it difficult to form and two areas separated.  I filled them in reasonably well, but still......
3. I would have made a scarfing jig to glue the lengths of plywood together.  I did this for gunwales and they worked out great.  The plywood joins aren't nearly as good.
4. I don't like the cane bench seat much.  I think I'll make a tractor seat for the boat using my Wenonah double tractor seat as a mold.  Carbon fiber would look pretty good, I think.
5. Plan for making floatation tanks ahead of time.  I ended up doing it because I did a pretty messy job at the ends of the boat with the fiberglass.  The ends of the boat are very fine so it was really difficult to get the glass into the ends of the boat very cleanly.  
6. I should have used more lights when varnishing.  There are a few sags and drips that I'm not too happy with near the shear line.

The boat I built is exactly the boat I wanted, but it really wasn't the easiest boat for a first time builder due to the fine entry.  That fine entry makes for a fast boat, but with pretty severe compound bends in the wood and very narrow ends that were hard to fiberglass on the inside.  It all worked out well, but it is something to consider when deciding what to build.

So what is next?  I think I'd like to build a short, freestyle boat.  That sounds like fun.  

Well, it is insanely fast

Took it out last Saturday minus the seat to check where I wanted to mount the seat.  The boat was modeled after a Blackhawk boat I once had that was relatively narrow with low primary stability and really fast.  Well, this one is that way too. I started kneeling in it and it started to feel pretty stable after an hour or so.   I mounted the seat pretty low (4"-5" drops) and went out Sunday again.  After I had a few hours in it, I felt pretty comfortable in it.  It tracks really straight.  It takes a little lean to convince it to turn reasonably quickly.  It isn't meant to be particularly maneuverable, but it is really fast.  I also found that it is actually fairly stable when paddled reasonably fast.  I've never paddled a boat before that had such a big stability difference between sitting still and moving at speed.
I built this to be a flat water exercise machine and it really couldn't be better for the purpose.  Really fast, really fun. 

Nearly done.....

It finally managed to get warm here in Illinois so I could get the final 3 coats of varnish to the inside and get the gunwales installed.  Today, I'll head down to the lake and try it out just kneeling in the boat to try to get an idea where (fore and aft) to install the seat.  I suspect I'd be close eyeballing it, but I'd be really unhappy to have to drill more holed than I have to in the gunwales.

Nearly forgot to mention how I decided what to build......

I had a solo canoe years ago from Blackhawk canoe...a Fishhawk.  I loved the canoe and should have never sold it.  It was very narrow and about 12' long.  I knew I wanted a little longer boat this time so found the dimensions from the web, added a couple of feet and about an inch on the width.  I found a guy in the Twin Cities called Eskimo Tom who puts a design into a naval architecture program to do a plate expansion which will loft the form and create the panels.  I asked for a 10 panel boat which is quite a few more than most people do.  I should have done 6 or 8 which would have been much easier and probably nearly as fast.  In a few weeks, I'll find out if I made a good choice!