Our community wood workshop group is building a Northeaster Dory as a fun first project. We are building from plans

We have reached the stage where the major components have been stitched together and the filleting and internal fibreglassing has been commenced, but we have a problem. When we were stitching the upper panels to the bulkheads (1, 2 and 3) we found that the notches cut into those bulkheads needed to be adjusted to accommodate each panel - only by a few mm but the end result is the top panel is now not level with the top of those three bulkheads as it appears to be in pictures or the manual

Now we (I should really say me!) hadn't worried about this during the construction phase because I had assumed this gap was left for an inwale - but of course there is no inwale only a 2 piece laminated outwale which again it appears should be level with the top of these 3 bulkheads

I am mystified how this arose because as I say we are building from (full size) plans so the parts are accurately cut and the top 3 panels rebated as per instructions I have I think eliminated a printing error as the cause as the notches should line up with the width of the panel at each station (I measured both on the plans) but as I say on assembly they didn't

It would appear we have two ways forward - either install the outwale at the top of the panel and ignore the fact it extends around an inch on average higher than the bulkhead tops - or trim that top panel so that it does fit to the top of those 3 bulkheads

Sorry for the long winded post

Any ideas what we did wrong and also which 'solution' do you think we should go with?

TIA