Agreed. I've never been to a wooden boat event--the CLC demo that I was talking about has only CLC there, along with CLC's boats. I was speaking "relatively"--sorry if that was not clear. The only wooden boats that I have seen are the Shearwater Merganser 16, the Pygmy Coho (both built by LeeG) the Pygmy AT that I've almost finished, and the CLC boats.

I've bought supplies from CLC, which is located 2 miles from my house, and they are very, very nice and helpful.

I was very close to ordering a QCC (fiberglass, manufactured) kayak when I met LeeG. It was a conversation with LeeG that made me (and my wife) think that an S&G kit might be the way to get started, instead of buying a ready-made boat.

FWIW, for me, and probably for many people, it's a big leap from signing a credit card slip and waiting for delivery, to building something that you know will take several months and many hours (with no experience) and a lot of patience.

Sometimes you just get lucky and meet the right person at the right time. Thanks LeeG.
-Mike

: When you go to any wooden boat event, you can always tell the boats designed
: and built by experienced paddlers from the boats built by woodworkers who
: are novice paddlers. CLC caters more to the latter group. After paddling
: most of CLC's offerings, it's pretty obvious that they fit into the same
: category as many plastic boats; they are boats that you grow out of rather
: than boats you grow into. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as
: that's the market you want to service. However, none of their in-house
: designs are well suited for advanced paddlers/paddling and they shouldn't
: be marketed as such. I also have a problem with the fact that they're
: relying on their customers' inexperience to hide the flaws in their boat
: designs.

: BTW, the people that I've met from CLC have always been really nice and very
: helpful. There's no faulting them in that department.