Skinning Help

[J'Kla]

I am trying to make a Uru Kayak and the nearest i can get to a boat is this tutorial it's like about six steps that just plain don't work the way the tutorial says.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials/Curves/Skinning

Is there any chance someone who knows what they are doing could have a quick look at it and get it so it works.

I can get my boat ribs by using add curve bezier (the one they say is not there)

I can subdivide (because the split button suggested does not exist.

And Join just jumps all of the curves to a single plane AHHHHHHHHHH! probably because you have to use bezier.

[Grogyan]

Negative, you must use a surface NURBS curve,
ALL CURVES MUST HAVE THE SAME NUMBER OF CONTROL POINTS

SHift+D as many times as you like for the length of the boat
adjust the handles of each curve to alter the design of the boat
Press B to border select all the curves
CTRL+J to join all the curves into 1
Press F

And your done