Unfortunately, there are people who have a lot of book knowledge and are free to share it, but don't have experience. I can imagine a comprehensive book that includes every piece of information relevant to how and why, but the how and why really only has context and meaning when there is experience to place the theoretical into reality.

Yes, absolutely. I think that's precisely the value of having access to an expert such as yourself - not so much as a source of facts, but rather as a source of experience. Facts are easy to transfer - Siri can probably tell us what ratio provides the strongest scarf joint, but I don't want Siri's advice on whether or not I should raise my deck for more foot room (or whatever).

Boatbuilding and all similar skills is about doing. Without doing the thing, no amount of explaining will help, because every good explanation will only generate more questions. As a result, the best answer, from the learning perspective is: "give it a try." A little bit of experience is worth a whole bunch of questions. Experience helps you formulate good questions. Without it, you get caught up in irrelevancies.

Hm. I may not be understanding you correctly, but I don't fully agree with the above as written. I would say that it's not all about doing, or all about explaining, but a process that incorporates both. Skills can only be mastered by practicing them - but if you want to learn golf, or tennis, or skiing, then "just give it a try" is the worst thing you can do. Seems to me that when it comes to boatbuilding, or woodworking in general, to pick a random example something like "how to use a plane" is a skill that can't be "explained," it has to be practiced. On the other hand, "knowing when to use a plane" requires experience - and that's where a single word of explanation from someone with that experience can be worth a year of "give it a try."

Knowing "why" is invaluable in the long run, but gaining the full and complete answer before you experience some of the alternatives yourself is too much to hope for.

Yes, absolutely. But that gets back to the question of what this forum is for - how it should be used - which is ultimately your call of course. I may be mis-understanding, but some posters seem to be saying that it's just for "advice" - someone asks a question, and an expert - specifically, an expert on designing and building kayaks - provides a specific answer. "Should I use CA glue for a scarf joint? No, you should not." No more and no less, and the only people who ought to be posting on this forum are those experts, and people who are asking for advice from those experts.

Now just that, in and of itself, would certainly be a great resource - but seems to me it'd also be a huge waste of an opportunity. There are clearly people here who aren't necessarily "expert kayak builders," but they Know Stuff. So if the question is phrased as "what's the correct kayak method for applying kayak varnish to a kayak during kayak building" and the answer given is "do this kayak technique with this kayak product exactly as follows," well then that's the end of it. Asked and answered. But if sufficient context is provided with that answer so that someone reading it says "Hm - I don't know much about kayak varnish, but if the issue is blah-blah-blah, well, I've been dealing with that for 30 years in regards to clear-coating cars, so I might be able to offer some thoughts..." (as of course happened here not long ago) well, to me that wouldn't be "taking the thread off topic" it would be a total value-add. Now obviously that does in fact happen on this forum all the time, and if I'd written this yesterday I might have added "... and of course I'm sure everyone would agree that it ought to continue to happen," but as of today, I'm not so sure.