I was doing two different things: wooden carvings from photos on solid maple boards, and stitch-and-glue kayak designs and building.
I used DelftShip (IIRC it was FreeShip at the time) to design the hulls. I tried a few others, including Rhino and trying to develop one in Blender, but the NURBS were a bit hacky then for what I was intending.
I would eventually use Rhino to develop the 2D panels to cut on my ProgressiveCNC rack-and-pinion router table. Along the edges to be joined, you would drill a very small hole, 0.0625" (~1.6mm) diameter, 6mm from the edge and 100 to 150mm apart. Using bare copper wire, you would fish it through and twist the ends to bring the edges into contact, hence 'stitch-and-glue'. You can look the process up online. The inside and outside would be glassed with epoxy resin from West Marine and fiberglass resulting in a beautiful glossy wood after much finishing and sanding. We would incorporate the carvings into the coaming around the kayak's cockpit. The kayaks were made from 4mm marine-grade Okume.
I also made traditional strip and strongback kayaks and a Greenland kayak with bamboo and canvas vs. seal skin. I didn't mean to go on. Seems like a lifetime ago!
The photoclinometry algorithm I utilized for the wood carvings from photos was adapted from NASA/JPL research to be able to get more information from the thousands of black and white singe lens photos taken by the various satellites and spacecraft. I wrote it in python for Blender. Now there are much more sophisticated geometry extraction algorithms with machine learning to guide the resulting mesh 3D creation without the use of laser scanners.
There are a lot of 'inspired' boat builders out there. I formed a wooden boat company called Franklin Boat Works with my partner, and we made all sorts of water craft in the small category. A design I never built was to be a lake ferry for about 8 to 10 people with an electric pancake motor for the shaft and long benches running fore and aft. All steampunked out with brass trimmings and gauges for fun.
The bottom line in all of this is that Blender's python API even in 2005 encouraged breaking out of the 3D program to make all sorts of stuff and push the limits for what could be done with it. I donated $50 (I think that was the amount, maybe $25) to the original drive to buy the Blender code to create the opensource Blender, and now my donation has been returned a 100-fold and I am amazed at what Blender has become! Keep making and coding!