Finally got the beast in the water this weekend. Paddles pretty nicely despite the floppy skin. I'll have to paddle it a bit more to really determine if it meets all of my design goals and see if the skin tightens up. First impressions are that its not particularly tippy (could have gone a couple inches more narrow, or much less chine width) but it tracks nicely and is much faster than the other 10 ft. 'yaks I'm used to paddling. It has more speed potential than the engine has right now I'm really surprised at how stable it is, I don't know if the loose skin increases stability or not.

The skin is linen, coated with polyurethane. During coating, the 'drum tight' fabric went loose - down right baggy on the hull - with its purplish color it looks like a kayak shaped raisin! Seems that the linen may shrink a bit with some wetting and drying cycles, so I'm going to try that before reskinning it.