Randy tends to cut his sails pretty full....but if you want to talk to someone about how to get it right, he's the one.



I know for the most part, I don't mess with sweep much... just tension. increase the prebend for heavy air. You can get the sail just as flat w/o as much dh tension (less sail stress). Hence if you increase the diamond tension and pull just as hard on the dh, you should get the sail to flatten at the top.



So, i assume that you have a pinhead on your 5.0? The way sails (square vs pin) react to dh is different and has to be considered. Just on general principle, I would figure between 1.5-2" of sweep. That seems to be a good range for a lot of different boats. I know on the 6.0, we ran less tension than on most other boats because the mast was stiff enought to support itself (and we wanted a LOT of power), but we could also dh it (8:1) and flatten it well (I'm a fairly large guy). I think it was like 1.75 sweep ,~725lbs (outer), and ~250 (inner) on the 6.0. Been ~2yrs since I sailed one.