It seems to me that the pupose of running a fillet along the seams on a S&G kayak is to basically fill in the corner and to provide some initial bonding between the plywood panels.

The pupose of the fibreglass tape is to provide the strength (Is this so?).

So if there is no corner to fill in (i.e. at the bow and stern ends of the keel to side seams and also possibly in the centre of the 2 keel panels where the bottom is almost flat) then, would it be better to just place the tape straight onto the seam without the fillet.

The only problem would be that the tape would be held off the panels by the wire stitches so I was thinking of placing short strips of tape between the stitches to hold the panels together then removing the stitches then apply the tape as usual.

These are just random thoughts of someone with too much time to think and not enough time or money to do.