: Rikki, I'm glad to hear you are paddling your first build 5 years later. I've
: been hearing so much about first builds being practice boats that I
: wondered if it was a subtle way of saying, "They all leak and pull to
: one side because they weren't built straight." My keel line looks
: good and straight, even though I have plenty of other "ick!"
: things to fix.

I've never really seen the importance in a kayak being absolutely straight. My sisters kayak, a red plastic blob , gets bent every time she straps it down on the car for a long trip, and takes about 5 hours to straighten out, but it still paddles fine for that time(plastic kayaks never really paddle "straight").
Maybe a well tracking kayak is a little better, but I think that people just use it as an excuse to either work more on a pre-existing kayak, or build a second, or third, or fourth kayak.
My two cents.