If he has been making furniture then he has a tablesaw and can make the wood strips.

I think he'd be happier with making a strip built kayak.

The Guillemot is designed as a boat for a more experienced paddler, who wants to surf on ocean waves. It might not be the best choice for a first boat for an inland paddler. Look at some of Nick's other designs, such as the Great Auk. The rivers near you are wide enough that any boat up to 20 feet long can handle them. Your boat won't be that big, so you have no worries. Anything 15 to 17 feet long designed as a general purpose kayak would be a good plan to review. Since you are building the boat yourself, just about anything can be customized to get the right fit. When you find a couple of designs, e-mail the designer and ask their opinion on what would work best.

Might want to consider that this boat may eventually end up being yours. If dad gets the bug, he'll be building a second boat. Maybe that one will be the Guillemot :)

And then mom will need a boat, and so on.

If he wants to get into the boat design a bit more your father can work from a table of offsets and plans, but I think he'd get more out of his time if he buys full-size patterns for the forms for this first boat, and then cuts those out himself.

Just some thoughts on this.

good luck to you both on this project.

PGJ