I found myself once returnig to the beach with strong wind blowing exactly in the same direction, in a narrow path with lots of obstacles. I centered the traveller and sheeted in. Then tried to control gybes by staying slitghtly out of DDW direction and making controlled gybes when necessary. Centering the traveller is a good idea, it depowers the boat in that case and also restrict the effect of an unwanted gybe. The problem is that things get scary very fast if you change direction, but I doubt that it happen primarily because of the traveller position. It's just because the main is sheeted in and you may not be able to sheet out fast enough. Landing was a bit scary actually. It wasn't sand but little stones, so I had to control the boat before landing. It wasn't 30 knots, in that case I'd have tryied to drop the main as suggested above.