Tried others, always return to sailing canoes
Dan Brown, Port Royal, South Carolina
I learned to sail in high school during the early sixties. One of my sailing instructors was a beautiful brunette on the swim team. She was...inspirational. My first real boat was a '47 Old Town 18' wood/canvas canoe. I paid $80 for it in 1965, the year I graduated from high school. I bought a 50 sf Ratsey & Laphorn red cotton lateen sail, a copy of the red cross canoeing handbook, made a pair of leeboards, and went canoe sailing. That was a beautiful boat. I wish I still had it. I bought the canoe I'm sailing now about 1977. I got it from the old Perception boat company when they were just getting started. They bought a bare Mohawk fiberglass hull and had their excellent wood craftsman outfit the boat with ash wales and rawhide laced seats. Beautiful. I paid $400 for the boat, got a Grumman 55sf C-class marconi sail for it, made leeboards and rudder and went sailing.  By this time I was a sailing nut. I bought an O'Day 17' Daysailor, moved here to the southern coast of Carolina in 1980, joined the sailing club and sailed every chance I could. I learned to race and went through several sailboats including Sunfish, San Juan 21, Force 5, Albacore, Hobie 14 and 16. In the meantime I was reading Chapelle and Bolger and building plywood sailing skiffs. I built a 16' "Battoe" sharpie skiff, 8' sailing pram, and 14' Bolger June Bug. I also got into kayaking, bought several used kayaks and built a couple of plywood stitch and glue “Greenland style" boats.
Boats have come and gone from my collection but I have kept the sailing canoe. I have raced, rowed, camped, fished, and made passionate love in it. Several sail rigs have been used with it over the years. The ones I like now are a 37sf Optimist sprit rig, 50sf lateen, made by cutting down a Sunfish sail, and a 60 sf old style Windsurfer sail. I built a pair of 8' akas and amas so I can sail it as a trimaran or monohull. Fore and aft decks have been added to stiffen the hull and keep out spray. Aluminum tubes have been added to the mast step area to triangulate structure and distribute mast loads. 
I am always looking for my next boat design/building project. One concept under consideration is a simplified hard chine extrapolation of Hugh Horton's “Bufflehead” concept. I also have a copy of Gary Dierking's outrigger sailing canoe book and would like to try an outrigger canoe. My goals now are to keep my boats light and fast, and to keep sailing and paddling!
The white sail is an Optimist pram sail and rig, 37 square feet. I usually use it when i sail my canoe as a monohull. the boat and rig is lightest and simplest in this form. the boat is 'lively and responsive' with the opti rig - sensitive to weight shifts and trim adjustments. the 'red' sail is from a Windsurfer, 60 sf. I use it for more power with the amas and akas (outriggers). the boat is faster, more powerful, and more stable with the windsurfer/outrigger rig. its also more complex and heavier. Which rig do i prefer? Hard to say...its like having two different boats with shared parts. The leeboard thwart is made from two boards that are through bolted to clamp onto the gunwales. its design is typical and can be found in the ACA website, CanoeSailingMagazine site, etc. Dan lives on a salt marsh overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway and Port Royal Sound. Ed.
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