You are right about strip width being a trade off. Wider can be quicker but as you said doesn't fit as well around tight curves.

3/4" is a good compromise, but other widths close to that can work quite well.

As I live in one of those advanced countries that use the metric system :), I used to use strips 19mm wide. However I realised that here was nothing magic about 19mm and built a kayak using 20mm wide strips.

One lot of 25mm rough sawn boards I bought cleaned up on both sides when they were still 22mm wide and I couldn't see any point in turning perfectly good timber into shavings, so I built with 22mm wide strips.

I have always used narrower strips on the parts of the kayak that have tight curves, so it really makes no difference whether I use 19mm , 20mm or 22mm strips for the bulk of the work. If the kayak has fairly hard chines, I rip some strips in half and use strips about 8mm to get around the tight curve.

If you use short strips and join them, then having a collection of strips of many different widths would limit your choices of strips to join together and you would have to keep them well organised. Having most of your strips around 3/4" and about 5% of them about half or two thirds that would be fairly convenient.