Thanks again,
There's definitely a skin on frame in my future. Bending wood is on my Bucket List.
The Swedish kayak Searacer, is like a hot young blond, a little too rich for my blood. 17" wide? yeowww! I translated the comments in Google Translate. (always helpful and inadvertently funny)

I don't feel like I'm giving anything up if I don't design my own hull right now. There are so many aspects of building to challenge me, I can wait. Always interested in the kayaks others have designed.
I like that performance parameters seem to be standardizing. It's a great way to compare different kayaks. Of course the numbers don't cover everything. I wish there were more builders near me that we could try out each other's 'yaks.

If I had lots of islands a couple of miles off the Southern California coast, I'd probably want to build a completely different design. My Christmas wish would be a 7-10 knot boat I could paddle out to the Channel Islands every weekend (Anacapa 11nMiles off the coast a typical trip is about 30nM).

Someone mentioned the bifurcated bow. I was curious about bulbous bows (the non-Aleut version) a few years ago, but those who know poo-poo'd the idea of putting one on a 'yak. I'd like to make one that I could bolt on just to try it out. If it had neutral buoyancy, it wouldn't throw everything out of whack or need the whole hull designed around it.
Paddling through the kelp made me think (of course), well that'd be a bad idea. But what if at the front of teh bulb, was a very thin raked edge sticking up to push the weeds under the bulb and hull? It starts looking like a bifurcated bow. Another thing people said was that bulbs are only useful within a narrow speed range... Well, after five years, paddling and gps. My speed is very consistent 3.8-4.3 knots. And I can always unbolt it and lie about the patch on the bow.