With the “weeklong solo trip” it still depends on the boat, place and season, with the caveat that I do not portage long, far or hard.
The available storage differs between a (soloized tandem) open canoe like the Penobscot and the Monarch or other decked boat. Hull width, depth and volume, pack size, barrel size, decks or no decks and anticipated conditions considerations all make a difference.
Lake or other freshwater trips differ from salt water, packing in a gravity filter vs bringing all the potable water on tidal trips. A week’s worth of water is a heavy, best-positioned-centered load.
Packing winter clothes, boots and sleeping bag differs vs summer trips; the winter bag alone is five times the size of a summer weight 30/50 flip bag and accompanying Gawd-it’s-hot-and-freaking-humid micro fiber sheet. I can always throw the summer bag over me at 3am when it finally cools down enough.
Whatever the gear guise I always have a dry bag portage pack with shoulder and waist straps, preferably a voluminous 115L if it will fit. Always a hard sided barrel or Cur-tec drum(s) for food storage, sized to fit the boat of choice. Most often another smaller dry bag, also with straps.
Packing the bags there are items I want stored together. Tent and poles, tarp with attached ridgeline/corner lines and stakes; those are the first things to go up and I’d like them together, and easy to grab towards the top of a pack instead of burrowing down. A wet take-down may mean those get repacked/drip protected differently until they dry out again.
Things that goes inside the tent, the stuff I want assurance will be kept dry, get stored together; sleeping bag, pillow case, spare clothes, micro-fiber sheet on hot weather trips all go inside garbage bags, inside coated compression stuff sacks, inside a dry bag for belt and suspenders and garters insurance.
That over-protected stuff gets disgorged from the dry bag, still in the compression sacks, and goes inside the tent as soon as it is set up. If I have to storm scurry (or stagger/crawl) back to the tent I want to know that everything I need is already inside, and still unpacked dry protected.
One odd note in that insurance assurance; on base camp trips I bring an over sized, breathable stuff bag. In the morning, after the sleeping bag has aired out from overnight moisture, I re-stuff it in that big stuff bag; it is a lot faster and easier to loosely stuff the sleeping bag in an oversized stuff bag in the morning and kick it to one end of the tent than to laboriously cram it into some just-barely-fits stuff sack or compression bag. Probably better for the fill too.
The exception to that kept together sleep gear is the giant Therma-rest pad, which goes into its own long narrow DIY dry bag for over sized storage ease. That big pad is lightweight in comparison to other gear, but awkwardly long and bulbous even when deflated; stored in a custom dry bag it can go near the stems, or up near gunwale height, or even get strapped to the stern of a decked boat.
Camp chair (not small) and chair accessories go in another long DIY dry bag, along with the day use hammock and straps, so all of my resting places are together, easy to get out and, more importantly, easy put away in protected dry bag storage before bedtime. The vestibules on the tent are not spacious, and anything I can leave outside under the tarp is appreciated. There it is in the morning, without crawling over it, or unzipping aux vestibule to look for it
That togetherness helps with repacking when breaking camp; I know what goes where without much thought from system memory.
Not sure exactly what you mean by “load distribution”. In each bag or barrel? – no so much that I can’t carry it without hurting myself, a weight limit that has decreased over the years. In the boat? – heaviest packs/barrels (or water) as close to center as practical, lighter clothes/sleeping bag/pad/tent/tarp further towards the stems.
Prepping for long trips, off-season trips, tote-the-drinking-water trips (or some combination) I do a test fit, packed in the boat of choice at home. And, laugh all you want, sometimes make a sketch of what best went where, to bring to the launch. I test packed for a multi-week, off-season, bring-water and portable toilet trip that didn’t occur ‘til 3+ weeks later on the road. No chance I’d have remembered that test pack fit at the launch weeks later without the sketch.
Other destinations are often a few days to a week road trip stop and visit friends journey away. That reminder sketch helps with my usual desire to get packed up and gone from a launch area ASAP, especially at busy launches or multi-party outfitter shuttle trailer drop offs. Get me outa here!
I don’t have a target weight, I recognize what is comfortably manageable in each bag or barrel design while packing it and picking it up.