I built a CH17LT from plans. I am not sure about the plans in "The New Kayak
Shop" but the panel lofting and length deminsions for the Chesapeake plans I followed were for the full length panel (after scarfing) not the deminsions for the individual front and rear panels that you start with prior to scarfing when building from kit. When building from plans, you should scarf or butt-joint together the full length strips that you will be cutting the panels from,rather than joining the pieces together after scarfing. YOu will essentialy be lofting onto a 16' x 6" (or whatever width) strip of scarfed together wood. This way, you will have zero chance for a mis-alignment of the panels when scarfing together.

If you still have your CH17LT plans, you might consider what I did, rather than building a CH16 from the book-

I recently finished my latest boat. Last year I built my first yak, a CLC CH17LT from a full kit. This winter I want to build another yak for my fiancee so we can paddle together. I took the CH17LT plans and scaled the overall length of the boat down by 4.167%, so that each 12" lofting station on the plans are now at 11.5". I call it a "CH16.3LT", longest panel length is 195.5". THis length allowed me to fit the longest panels onto blank strips that are made from only 1 scarf joint in the middle (where as the CH17LT plans call for 2 scarfs on each panel to reach 17".
I took inspiration from shawn bakers modified panel layout (which were for a CH17). I found that with carefull use of the panel layout, it was possible to build the entire boat from 2 sheets of metric deminstion Okoume.
YOu need 14.5" and 15.5" strip of plywood width to do the all 4 of the bottom panels, then, do both of the stern sides in a 11" width and one of the bow side panels from in the remaining 7" of the first sheet (48" total width). Then you just need to use a 7" strip off the second panel for the last bow side panel, leaving a 41" width panel for both of the deck coverings. The fit to get all the 7 panels on the fist sheet is tight but doable, I would reccomend rough drawing out all the panels onto the wood before cutting to achieve most efficient use of the wood. Probably would not work if using the taller standard CH (non-LT) panel widths. Remainder of the wood needed for bulkheads, combing etc will need to be sourced from another sheet (but does not necessarily need to be okoume).
PS- the modified boat works great- much more "lively" and turn-happy that the CH17LT that I have to compare it with.

-Jason Gray
Anchorage, AK

: I've built two Pygmys & a CLC LT17 from kits and now I'm ready to build
: from plans. I'm considering building the CLC 16 from "The New Kayak
: Shop". My question is that I would prefer to use butt joints (a la
: Pygmy) instead of scarfing. I realize that this will make the boat a
: little longer but will it lead to problems in aligning the panels when
: stitching and possibly result in uneven lines & gaps?