All,

A friend of mine has asked me to help him build a strip canoe for use in calm costal bays. He's planning to paddle it mostly solo but will occasionally take his young daughter. Any suggestions on patterns or designs we should be looking at? I've done several kayaks but no canoes and this will be his first boat of any sort.

thanks,

Jim

Jim-
I built some canoes years ago, and did a fair bit of canoeing for a few years 'back in the day' - both evening and early morning paddling on a calm river and longer trips that included whitewater and carrying gear and food for several weeks.
My main advice is to avoid completely the 'Prospector' style canoes unless your friend will be carrying a few hundred pounds of gear. A 'too big' boat will sit on top of the water and be blown 'every which way' by the wind.
If your friend is a canoe paddler, he won't be interested in the boats with a 'chair' built in, paddled with a double-blade paddle.
Is the daughter expecting to paddle or just go for a ride? (i.e. one solo paddling station in the middle of the boat, or.....) Canoes are basically tandem (which you can 'sort of' solo paddle by kneeling in the middle and heeling the boat, or paddle from the stern with rocks in the front (!) if you are expert enough) or solo.
I built a couple of boats from plans from the Minnesota Canoe Association - a Kootenay solo by Bruce Kunz which was a very nice little boat, and a 'cruiser' which I sold to a marathon paddler as a training boat. Google will find the plans still.
I also built a few tandem canoes from the Ted Moores Canoecraft book and they were very nice boats.

Most canoes are much, much easier to build than a kayak, IMO and IME. (Good place to use those B&C strips that don't work well for kayaks,too.)