I added a full floatation ama to my old fiberglass canoe for sailing experiments. Performance was disappointing until one day I found I was flying along faster than ever before and realised the float was out of the water. I didn't know enough back then to realise that the float was causing a great deal of drag; your skinny wave-piercing ama is much better in that respect. If float style amas are preferred perhaps the best solution is to have two mounted high so you can sail with the out of the water; all they do is provide emergency stability if a gust arrives.

Purist sailing canoers will dispute the need for amas, but a true sailing canoe is a much different animal than a paddling canoe or kayak.

Speaking of kayaks, I used a Bruce Foil with a small sailing rig on a short, dumpy old plastic kayak which worked well. A Bruce foil is an angled leeboard on an outrigger, it develops a counter-torque to offset the heeling force of the sail. It was more compact and lighter than the float and worked well on both weather and lee sides. Mine was crude, just a square of plywood with rounded edges but it did the job of keeping the boat upright at speeds that had a bow wave above my elbows. Probably only around 6 knots but close to planing and quite exciting - I wonder how much faster a long skinny boat would have gone . . .