Hi John,
Thanks for the interest in the build. I moved it to RCGroups as there are more local modelers in Southern California that are tuned into the build threads here. I have tried most of the vendors on ebay.de but the majority do not ship to the US and not one single vendor would tell me why. I have drawn some conclusions, probably wrong, but will not attempt to purchase anything from vendors on ebay.de anymore. There are solutions to all problems building the Seabex One and I am pressing on.
As far as you finding poor quality in the kit, unfortunately I purchased my kit from one of the auction sites and found no strip wood. Luckily all the strip wood for this kit is very close to wood in the LHS so very little milling is required. Everything else was there and with very careful handling of all the ABS parts it seems to be going together quite nicely. I think I am missing some parts from the fittings kit but there are a lot of sources for model ship fittings these days.
Good luck on your build.