Bruce,
<br>In raking your spreaders forward you have straightehed your mast.
<br>It is great that you have adjustable spreaders because it will assit you in setting up your masts bending characteristics to your sail and body weight.
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<br>I suspect what you have done is made your sail fuller but more importantly you have made your leach tighter.
<br>These things induce drag and also give the weather helm.
<br>(Slow and weather helm.)
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<br>If you want to sail with your mast set like this you will have a lot of power off the breese but your going to pay for it upwind.
<br>Once again you will either have to sail upwind with your traveller out further or get some more bend back into that mast.
<br>As you sail upwind ease your traveller an inch at a time and eventually the helm should go nuetral again. If your mast is too straight you may still not be able to get it going the way you want it. Give it a try and see.
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<br>You have two variables to play with, diamond tension and spreader rake. They can both be set in different combinations to give the same prebend at rest but once you start applying sheet tension and downhaul the mast will behave differently. The more spreader rake the more the mast will bend under load.
<br>If you're not happy I would suggest you measure your prebend now and then gradually remove pre bend and measure and document your settings and observations.
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<br>My veiw is that basically a lighter person will benefit more from more spreader rake and a heavier person less spreader rake even if the pre bend is the same unloaded.
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<br>There are a lot of variables and it is essential to keep track of your tuning progress that you do your best to change only one variable at a time.
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<br>Just something for you to think about.
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<br>Phill<br><br>