This 1935 history of sailing canoes originally published by the American Canoe Association is well worth a look.
It has been republished online by the editors of the excellent Skinny Hull magazine. (There’s another link to this document at the Dragonfly Canoe Works website (I’m guessing this may be the original source).
The photos in the brief history may be a little fuzzy, but they tell an amazing story of early diversity before the uniformity of the ACA classes was established, and extreme sailing long before the invention of the wetsuit.
The text itself is US-oriented, as might be expected, but interesting nonetheless, and makes a good job of summarising the development of the decked sailing canoe on both sides of the Atlantic, starting with John Macgregor’s Rob Roy.
I wonder what happened to Nathaniel Herreshoff’s beautiful but scary-looking proposed class of 1935?
Turning to Skinny Hull magazine itself, I’m particularly taken with an article in the first issue – it’s by John Summers of the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario, and features what I think is a fabulous little craft. There are supposed to be stitch and glue plans to buy too, though it might be necessary to contact Mr Summers directly as I can’t see them where they’re supposed to be.
Finally, there’s this sequence of photos on YouTube to consider…