The Yukon River Quest (http://www.yukonriverquest.com/) has an increasingly popular Voyageur class. Martin Bernardin of Kisseynew Canoe has built a couple of voyageurs for this race and there is a picture sequence of the building of his first self designed and quite beautiful wood strip voyageur, in two parts, on his website: http://www.kisseynewcanoecompany.com/index.html

This boat placed second in the 2006 River Quest and showed the potential of the voyageur boats as racing designs. His second boat, a very fast, tippy carbon fiber racing machine, won the 2008 race in record time. I'm not sure how stable the stripper is or how suitable it would be for inexperienced paddlers, but Martin is a very nice guy and would probably be happy to answer at least a few questions.

Boats such as Martin's carbon racer, which are purpose-built for the race, would not themselves be suitable for your purposes, but his strip building techniques show that what you propose is quite feasible. Many of the other voyageurs in the race are much more stable commercially produced fiberglass boats. I believe that many/most/all of these are made by Clipper Canoes (http://www.clippercanoes.com/bigboats.php?PHPSESSID=6b4b22030e288ea86261bff370c41375). Their Voyageur and Northern Dancer designs should give you some basic design parameters, and both they and Martin might be willing to share design and construction tips.

I also suggest posting to the River Quest forum on their website to see if anyone else can offer assistance. Good luck with your project, and please keep us informed as you progress through the design and build cycle.