I staggered the joints on my canoe when i built it years ago. I had enough strips that broke at knots when cutting them, that it was not hard to make it work out.

yes...you do offset them.

its pretty straightforward, similar to a wooden floor.  

in my strip builts i usually try to keep them at least a foot offset and no repeats (breaks) in the same section for seven strips.

(e.g., if you looked at a one foot section between two station, you will only find one in seven boards having a joint/splice)

fwiw...i make both the left side and right side with the same joint pattern. and i try to make my joints as inconspicuous as possible.  my style is to make them random with no pattern...since i am using the strips themselves for whatever pattern i am doing.

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���Sorry for the blank entry. Was trying to send over a picture of a Night Heron that is 18 feet long and other than a few trim pieces no scarfs were made. I think the longest strip was 6 feet long. The reason for the short strips was not because of short boards but because of limited working space. Tom C

Often on Marathon canoes, a subset of canoes that were often stripped by builders whose approach was pragmatic, the strips were just butted, but then they were offset.  No loss in strength that posed a problem.   

Strips that are finger joined, or minimally scarphed, strips that then get glassed over (and assuming we aren't making spars of multihull beams) will be more than strong enough not to offset, but aesthetically one may offset them.  There isn't much of an aesthetic advantage to offsetting them except the people looking at the boat will probably be wondering the same kind of things about whether the strips should have been offset, so that affects the appreciation of the work done.