Received help from a mate yesterday, he also lent me some working lights so we can now work into the night.

Managed to complete all of the planks, when using a plane or spokeshave on the ply's end-grain the blades blunt quickly so a good stone to sharpen them is essential, my mate Dave demonstrated it is easier to plane down to the line with the board laid flat and the plane side on as you can see the line better but you need a lighter plane i.e. a block plane, a smoothing plane becomes too heavy for this job. We laid out both halves of the first two planks and the canoe starts to take shape.