Simon it is a bit of a worry if it goes down when you pull it. But I guess at your age....

Dave you can check in your timber hulls to see if they have been strengthened.

If you look into the forward hatches there should be a plywood strengthener on the inner sides under fwd beam. It should be tapered at the edges and roughly a foot square. The tapered edges prevent a hard stiff edge or pressure line and it should strengthen the hulls at the stress point between the bridle trying to pull the hulls together and the fwd beam holding them out.

My limited understanding is that when boats went to the shorter bridle they had some problems with stresses and this alleviated it. As long as it is still solidly laminated to the inside the kite should not be a problem.

From some of the recent posts it may be worth while checking the anchor points for your bridle too. The easiest way to do this is put a camera and light on a pole and poke it fwd. In a 1/2 hour footage you will probably only get 5 seconds of what you want to see but on a digital camera it doesn't matter. Also a good way to check the glassing around your dagger board case without ripping hulls off.

Luke