The problem with two rudders is trying to get them in synch. With a sailing canoe, close enough is going to produce too much drag and substantially slow you down. Made worse if you leave enough slop in the pvc tube notion to allow for wood swelling. I also don't think you're going to need it because you aren't talking about having then far out from the beam like the leeboard, so heeling over shouldn't be lifting it far out of the water. Even a leeboard still works reasonably well with the boat heeled over further then you'd expect. The further aft you mount the rudder, the closer to centerline it will be and the less affected by roll. If you add outriggers for sailing, you really don't need the double rudder then. I don't think you'll like trying to steer by grasping a cross member. There's no way for you to move around like you can with a tiller or hiking stick, and the further over you have to throw the rudder, the further aft you have to move, which isn't good for stability, especially when you need to be hard over on the rudder because of an emergency.

Lateen is good. I like it. Simple, easy, effective, etc. Gets your moment arm down closer to the deck, which on things like canoes and kayaks is very important. If you find yourself disapointed with performance, it's probably a size issue. The snark's were/are lightweight pond toys of nominal length. 12 feet as I recall, 14 for their really big one. So it may not be enough sail to adequately move your canoe depending on its size. Easy enough to make a larger lateen rig of course. Craig O'D's web page has some very interesting ideas and links about home made sails. He loves cheap blue tarps, especially for experiments. For canoes and kayaks, I think clear pastic sheets are nifty.

As for pictures, sure I'd like to see them!

> Thanks again for the great ideas! I'm going to use a lateen (sp?)
> sail I got in a deal some time back. I think it was used on a snark.
> I've already determined the center of effort in relation to the center
> of lateral resistance. I'm thinking of using two rudders now on each
> side of the boat connected together with a cross menber simular to
> the stearing assembly on a riding lawnmower. The idea here is to have
> smaller rudder blades and allowing for at least one blade to be deep
> in the water when healing over. What do ya think? I like ther pvc
> pipe idea with the blades mounted on dowels. This should allow me
> to simply reach back to the cross member for control.