Hi Robert,
Skinning and Templates are 2 different things.
mojoPortal skins are not just designed for 2 column layout, they have adaptive layout. All the included skins adapt from 1 to 3 columns depending on how you arrange content instances on a page.
Templates can be used to do column layout within a specific content instance but that is different than the main adaptive column layout that the skins have.
Templates are stored in the database.
Skinning documentation starts here.
There is an article about creating templates here. One of the included templates has 3 columns over 1 column, it can easily be copied and edited using source view to remove a column.
Hope it helps,
Joe