The first kayak we built was an Osprey Std, the second an Arctic Tern 14. From having built both boats, I have to agree with Larry on this:

:I have learned it is best to follow the designers instructions until you have :enough experience to do things your own way. This is especially true with glassing. There are so many opposing views, it's gets confusing to first time builders Larry C

On the first boat, we kept second guessing the instructions because we thought we knew better. Many of the times we deviated from what the instructions said, we ended up regretting it later. We ended up over-epoxing the boat, and even though it's great, it's probably much heavier than it needed to be (we were very worried about the strength of the seams, so we went overboard with the epoxy). On the Arctic Tern, we've followed the instructions to the letter and have a much lighter boat with a lot less goo that has to be sanded off before we can varnish it. Epoxy is STRONG! You don't need much to glue a seam together.

Another piece of advice, don't worry too much. These Pygmy boats are great. You have to work hard to mess them up. Have fun!