: Some of the best ones I've come up with would require either a
: two-tone, scarfed sheer strip on the hull (not desirable due to weakness
: of strip, esp. since I have loads of full-length WRC strips available),

I certainly scarfed sheer strips on my first boat - mainly because I didn't
have full-length strips. I used a long tapered through-the thickness scarf
and had no porblem with either strength or fairness.

: or
: nice long strips crossing from the deck to the hull.

I've looked at designs where the pattern crosses the sheer line and thought
about ways to achieve them. Its normally hard because we build boats in two
parts, hull and deck, then join these later.

Has anyone tried building a boat in two halves - port and starboard - then
joining along the keel and deck centre-line ? In many ways this should be
easier, as the two halves are mirror-images and should distort to the same
extent as epoxy cures, rather than the situation where hull and deck, being
different shapes, seem to "curl" to a different extent and can be a pain to
align.

The disadvantage would be that critical holes for cockpit and hatches could
not be cut until after the halves were mated. For the cockpit, which is a
large opening, this is probably no harder than the way "everyone" does it.
You could avoid trying to work on small hatch openings in a closed boat by
using bulkhead hatches.

Is there a critical reason why port/starboard halves is impractical that
I'm missing ?

Andy