Aargh. I'd thought I'd locked this decision down - I was ready to order the plans today, but now I'm back to square one.

Some general comments (just IMO, of course) about choosing a boat or a design.....
One factor which makes boat choice difficult is the "I won't say anything bad about my boat because it will affect the value for resale" phenomenon.
You can see this at online review sites like paddling.net where all the boats seem to score high.
If I've spent a couple of hundred hours on a build, it's extra tough to say I'm disappointed in the performance of the boat. Also, because I'm a good builder but a mediocre paddler, I don't really have the skills to fully evaluate a design. (That's one reason I try to pick boats- plans or production- designed by expert paddlers.)
When choosing a boat plan, it's even more difficult:
1)Some plans have detailed specs (stability curves, wetted surface area, Prismatic Coefficient, LWL, beam at waterline, etc.), others don't. Compare the info Bjorn Thomasson provides with other designers -there's a wide range of data.
2) There aren't many reviews from non-builders or non-owners - the now-defunct SeaKayaker magazine reviewed some CLC and Pygmy kit designs, but I don't think I've ever seen a review of a strip boat from somebody who didn't have a direct interest in 'emphasizing the positive'. It's a small community and nobody wants to get into 'being negative' or 'starting a fight'.
3) With both commercial production boats and plans for builders, there's seldom any information about the design and prototyping process - how was the design 'tested' before the plans were released to builders? How many prototypes were paddled before the design was finalized? Some of the Mariner kayaks went through 5-6-7 paddled versions before the design was 'locked down- how many plans for building have been similarly tested?
Recently, I heard Brian Henry (one of the founders of Current Designs) say that "in the sea kayak 'boom years' we could sell anything that floated, so we went quickly from design to plug to production mold". Some excellent boats came out of that process, some not so much....

It's easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of cutting strips and setting up molds, but the more time you can spend with expert paddlers who are willing to be candid about 'good and bad features' of different boats (remember, people don't want to insult their friends' boats), and the more 'seat time' you can get in different boats (hopefully in non-calm conditions), the better your chances of having a great-paddling boat at the end of your build.