Tall guy.....you've confused me with a couple of things you said....
If the vertical serperation between the cloud layers is only 1000ft, and you are above the transition level, then you are not meeting the requirement of VFR. You need to be seperated from cloud 1000ft vertically under VFR above 3000ft. To meet his you'd need a 2000ft gap between the cloud layers. So your option 3 doesn't seem to be legal. It may very well be the most sensible though
You also say
If VFR then I should be at an altitude rather than FL, but surely in this environment setting 1013 would be more sensible?
Why? There is no prohibition on using FL's instead of altitudes when under VFR, in fact it makes sense to use FL's as that's what everyone else will be using. Or did you mean something else?
dp