I think it's probably a matter of personal choice. If you were to put on a heavy seal-coat so that the most absorption would happen, you would have a stronger boat since more has penetrated and beefed-up the wood. If you put on a thin seal-coat, you will get a lighter boat -- but given all the epoxy that goes into filling the glass weave and end-pours, this is probably a very small amount in comparison. A thin seal-coat may not go too far into the wood, but it will still form a barrier through which no more epoxy will penetrate.

The decision may come down to visual considerations -- does more or less epoxy make for uniform wood color? I'm not sure. This would probably not be a consideration in a stripper, which has lots of natural wood variation, anyway. I had to do some re-work on one of my Pygmy plywood panels and I sanded through the epoxy and back down into wood. When I epoxied this later, the color of the sanded-thru areas were lighter, more blonde, than the honey-colored area where the epoxy hadn't been sanded through.

Hope this helps! Dean