: I've got a hankerin' to design a surf boat ... prolly a S&G.

Go check out some of the recent past postings at the Design Forum. Nick has been fiddling with a concept S&G surf boat and has posted his drawings. He might be persuaded to unload a set of plans for a Beta copy.

: I'm loosely familiar with the design software on the market but I have no
: clue which are best suited to designing kayaks. Suggestions anyone?

Depends on what style of build you'd like to utilize. As for the freeware versions; Hulls by Greg Carlson is very good for S&G boats. For stripper construction look at Bearboat by Robert Livingston as well as Kayak Foundry by Ross Leidy.

There are, of course, others but they start costing money.

: Wha-da-ya do with a scale model of the design? Other than checking fairness
: and perhaps how it sets in the water ... it seems rather useless unless
: you have some way to preform other tests in the "scale" realm
: ... whose results are translateable to the full size design. So ... what
: other uses do scale models have?

I just built a 1/6 model of a new sailing canoe/trimaran I designed and it will make a very cool RC sailboat for my 13 yr. old son.

Chris