Read your construction manual on deck installation.  The deck is NOT stiched.  It is held on with packing tape / tie-down straps and epoxied and taped on the inside.  Good Luck and enjoy.

Paul

I just bought the plans and manual and have been studying both for a week now....there are no instructions for hole placement and contrary to Pauls statement, the deck and the hull are stitched together. The instructions simlpy suggest that you may use 1 of every 4 stitches and choose to use shrink tape in place, however stitches are still required to get an exact fit.

It would probably be good to contact CLC directly and ask them about hole placement.  They are great at answering questions and very helpful. 

I am working on a Wood Duck from plans right now (did a Shearwater from a kit a few years ago).  The Wood Duck plans had holes marked on all panels including the deck.  However, I did not use the holes for the deck to hull joint for this build, I did the packing tape method and it worked great. 

On my Shearwater build I used the stitches the first time I put the deck and hull together (for the tack weld the hull and deck panels step) but it was so cumbersome and frustrating that I ended up going the packing tape method the second time when I did the final hull/deck mating and it was so much easier. It definitely helps to have two people during this step if you use the packing tape method though. 

Notwithstanding the growing preference for taping hull and deck clamshells together, kits SHOULD have all of the holes drilled, decks and all.  Get in touch.  A missing computer-drilled hole here and there happens---there are hundreds in a single kit---but something's wrong if all are missing in a particular part.  Anyone else see this?

This happened to me as well. Contact CLC to get info on the hole placement. It takes some time but you still can get a quality product. I dont understand why this is a reoccuring issue with the production of Shearwater 17 kits.

The CNC machine is most emphatically supposed to be drilling stitch holes in the Shearwater 17's deck panels.  I don't know what happened in your kit, or why it has happened more than once, but I am going to find out.  We can either send you a full-sized drilling pattern or replacement parts.  

I looked into this---when I posted a moment ago I didn't realize this is a thread from January.  To my certain knowledge, there is no epidemic of Shearwater kits lacking the pre-drilled stitch holes in decks.  I didn't realize that the adjacent thread was about plans builders, not kit builders.  

If any Shearwater kit builders out there are missing pre-drilled stitch holes in decks, they should ping us at once.

I got hull pieces for a SW17h a month or so ago. All stitch hole were in place.

Dan

hmmm. While my ch18 has sheer clamps and brass nails, I think I'd prefer not to have the deck wire holes on the shearwater kit if I were buying it. Seems the packing tape method should work fine and then you don't have the wire spots or have to worry about any hole misallignment if it occurs.