: 5 other members of the club
: all paddling British style yaks.

I'm assuming that by "british style" you are talking about all-fibreglass
boats with high stem and stern of the sort built by Valley, North Shore
and Nigel Dennis, with fairly rounded bottoms and drop skegs ?

: With wind gusts about 20 -25 knots , I
: found myself struggling to keep up with them. Noticed the Brits glide
: across the waves while my CLC punches through the waves, stroke for stroke
: I was outgunned by the Brits.

I've just taken my 15'3" scaled-down Cormorant hybrid for her first sea
trip (46 miles over 3 days, circumnavigating Bute in Western Scotland).
Seven of the other paddlers had North Shore boats, two of them the hard-chined
Buccaneer design, others with the older Shoreline hull and its more modern
derivatives, an Atlantic and a Calypso. The ninth paddler had a plastic
Capella from P&H which has a similar style of hull. All their hulls were
a foot or more longer than mine, with beam and depth in proportion. We had
winds up to force five, though thankfully less than that on the open
crossings of the Clyde. My Cormorant was built as a dayboat for me, or a
tripping boat for my much lighter wife, so with food and gear for four days
(the originally planned length of the trip) I was somewhat overloaded. On
the first day we were crossing the Clyde with a knot or so of tide from our
left and a stiff breeze (3 gusting 4) over the right shoulder, making for
two to three feet of steep chop. I certainly found that my boat, with 2-3 cm
narrower beam than everyone else, was more difficult to handle than my own
North Shore composite boat which I have used previously. It wasn't so much
that I was punching through waves, but the ones which broke were definitely
putting a lot of capsizing moment on the hard-chined hull. Because I was
working harder to keep balance, I was struggling to keep up the same speed
as the better paddlers in the group. Eventually the sea had me, and with
the skeg fully deployed, I failed twice to roll, and bailed out. Very
ignominious. Once back in the boat, I had to paddle hard to get warm, and
made at least as good time as the others.

Later into the trip, as I grew more used to the boat, it proved to be much
better into a headwind than the Brit-style boats, because the tracking is
very solid, the boat was low in the water, offering less windage, and
stability was not an issue. It did, however, as you describe, punch through
a head sea rather than lifting over it. Apart from the wetter ride, I am
quite happy with this.

On the final day, we crossed the Clyde again, a five mile diagonal with
wind from the left, with the tide. The waves were bigger, but not as steep.
Now used to the boat, I found I was having no difficulty keeping pace with
everyone else. As I was more relaxed, less effort was going into keeping
the boat level - just let her ride the waves, which is essentially what
everyone else was doing. Looking around, I was needing a noticeably lower
stroke rate to maintain the same pace than most of my friends.

: Can someone explain what type of hull design they have ?

Most British boats are rounded-out from a starting point which is "West
Greenland" in style. The rounding probably comes from ease of manufacture
in all-composite - there are a few designs with harder chines, but these
too are East Arctic in derivation. Brits tend, historically, to have paddled
more exposed waters than those American paddlers who frequented the inside
passage. That may not be true today, with more adventurous paddlers on both
east and west coasts, but the style of boat remains. CLC boats seem to belong
to that class of boats with less raised bow and stern, but I would guess it
is the hard chnes that make most difference in the conditions you describe.

: Am currently building my first stripper Night Heron. It's
: about 70% complete. Has anyone out there compared the speed between the NH
: and the Brits?

I'd love to be able to do that, but there don't seem to be many builders here
in Britain. The only strip or hybrid boats I've ever seen are the ones I built
myself :-( And the only S+G was a CLC design on the premises of Fyne Boat Kits
who market CLC designs under licence.

Andy