I don't buy that explination because : Unless you are perfect in applying the epoxy on you boat at the seams, you need to sand the seams out fair anyway. This will take off some of the wood near the seams. Thus if this were the case the area near all of the seams wiould come out lighter than the middle of the pannels, but that demonstatably is not the case.
Yeah it;s not very noticable, but I notice, and it bugs me. I want this boat to be as perfect as I can make it

: I also built a Pygmy and I recall the discussions Jeff mentioned. Some folks
: did say they sanded off the tape on the outside. I choose to leave mine
: alone though (I also think it might be structurally important), and the
: joints do have color mismatches. It's backward from the way your
: hypothesis would have it, though. The color at the joints is lighter than
: the rest of the panel, not darker. One explanation I've heard is that
: unepoxied wood darkens due to oxidation. The seams are epoxied first so
: they darken least. Pygmy's manual even mentions it in the construction
: manual. Makes sense to me. After varnishing, the color difference is
: hardly noticable on most of the joints and doesn't bother me a bit.