Rick,
It's me again, and back to the subject of strip laying technique that you've inquired about. I just want to let you know that there are many ways to accomplish the task of laying strips into designs, and that although Nick's method of laying the accent strips first and filling in to them seems to be the standard, I would like to suggest others.

You can begin your stripping without the accent strips, just by starting in an area and filling in large blocks of strips. I suppose you could even strip the majority of the boat in solid colors or just the main color (if only one main species) and draw your desired pattern onto these rough chunks of strips. Then cut out your accent strips or decorative shapes and fill in that area. To me this makes more sense, because there's less strip ends to match to an existing accent strip. I would suggest using mulitple thin strips of various colors for this accent strip(s) regardless of how you do it. But if you were to just strip the left side of the deck so that you've passed where the accent strip will be, then using a flexible strip to draw the curved accent, cut off the excess garbage and glue in your accent strips. I may have just explained the same thing twice? Ooops. But anyway, the fewer strips that you have to end join and match to an existing strip, the faster the process, and the very same end result. Does that make sense? Below is a picture of a pair of small accent strips added after the pine was all in place and extending beyond the accent strip, but this method could easily be done to any extreme. Just look at Kent LeBoutillier and the work he has done. Impressive!
SMF