Jenny:

My wife and I built a CLC 16LT this winter and it fits her very well. She's 5'2" and 120 lbs. Tracks straight, turns pretty easily without a rudder, and is reasonably stable (the boat, not the wife, although she's pretty stable too!).

As for the relative ease or difficulty of building a Pygmy-style chined deck or a CLC-style cambered deck I think there's pros and cons to each method. I haven't built a Pygmy-style deck so can't really comment on the difficulty of laying the glass tape on the inside seam. But trimming the cambered type deck is not all that difficult, nor is bending the deck over the shear clamps. On my 2nd stitch and glue boat (a Cormorant) I fit the deck by screwing it to the shear clamps prior to gluing it. I then could see where the shear clamps needed a bit more planing. I then unscrewed the deck, further planed the shear clamps, and glued/screwed it on again. That worked much more easily than gluing/nailing all at once. But either method (Pygmy or CLC) is quite do-able. As someone else recommended, check out Courtney's site for a very enjoyable description of the building process by someone without much prior woodworking experience.

Best of luck and I'm sure you'll enjoy whatever your ultimate choice is. And if you're like the other folks here it won't be the last kayak you build.

Peter