In the U.S. there's quite a bit of literature on the skipjack, which is generally referred to as "the last working sailing craft." Years ago Howard I. Chapelle published a nice booklet called "Notes on Chesapeake Bay Skipjacks," which has been reprinted in various forms from time to time. think it may have originally appeared as a series of articles in The American Neptune. It's currently available in bound, paperback form from the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (http://www.cbmm.org/wh_store_pubs.htmlI). If you have any interest in such things, you'll enjoy playing around with that museum's website.
Back in the early '80s Model Shipways released a beautiful, large-scale skipjack kit, based on Chapelle's plans for one named the Willie L. Bennett. MS commissioned an excellent researcher and draftsman, Ben Lankford, to "flesh out" Chapelle's basic drawing into a remarkably detailed set of plans showing a skipjack fitted for dredging oysters as of the 1930s or thereabouts. The kit is still available through Model Expo (http://www.modelexpoonline.com/). I don't know whether Model Expo is willing to sell the plans separately or not, but I believe they've put the instruction manual online as a PDF file. If I'm right about that, you can get at it by clicking on the Model Shipways icon on the home page, then scrolling down to the Willie L. Bennett kit and clicking on that.
Several authors and photographers have gotten interested in skipjacks and published books about them in recent years. If you go to the website of the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain (http://www.bn.com/) and do a "keyword search" on the word "skipjack," you may be surprised at the number of hits you get.
Skipjacks are beautiful boats, and make beautiful models. Unfortunately the real skipjacks are almost gone. I can remember when seventy or eighty of them were working the Bay's oyster beds; old timers can remember when they numbered in the hundreds. Now there are fewer than a dozen.
One of them, the Rebecca T. Ruarke, carries passengers on two-hour cruises around the upper Bay. (Technically her status as a skipjack is slightly debatable; she has a round bilge, and is sometimes referred to as a "sloop rigged as a skipjack." Above the waterline the distinction isn't particularly relevant.) A couple of summers ago my wife and I spent a thoroughly delightful afternoon on board her. Two of the other passengers steered, and I got to handle the jib. It's ludicrously easy. At the beginning of the season the captain puts a big knot in each jib sheet, and one in the main sheet, to let the sails set themselves at about the angle he thinks is usually right. For the rest of the year it's just a matter of hauling and casting off the halyards. At least it looks easy. I got the jib up all right (though the last few feet of halyard took some heavy-duty hauling), but then noticed that the weather sheet was fouled on the knighthead. When I reached down and cleared it I made another discovery: that I was inadvertently standing with one foot on each side of the standing part of the sheet. When the sheet came clear and the jib caught the wind - well, let's just say if I hadn't already been circumcised....
That experience goes down as one of the top three ridiculous, nautically-related events of my life so far. (The other two: the time I fell into the boating lake at Regent's Park, in London, and the time I got seasick lying on a waterbed in a furniture store.)