But Jake, the openess of the loop that you want, is fully determined by how you screw the strap on the hull.

Mounted on a horizontal level you can bend the strapends before the fixation a little so that they make a little horizontal angle to each other, resulting in any openess that you want. (Besides the fact that you can adjust the bow itself by the screw distance and the adjustable velcro-mechanism.)

Your fixation with one strapend horizontal and one vertical on the transom itself, I would never use. What do you gain :one or two inches more backward? But your method makes it clear why you have troubles with forming a nice fit for the Dakines.

I like to comment more on the almost standard common used strap position on cat-hulls :

Afb002 by northseajunkie, on Flickr[/img]

You see that I created a much more vertical angled platform for my both feet and I made a specific full platform for my strap. The risk of being trapped in a fall, or when loosing the wire, is much less now. Besides it stands much more comfortable for your feet.

It seems to me that footstraps and their position are still a "stepchild" for cathull designers. You can see on the new Nacra-17's that they made a small step in adapting the hull form a little bit, but not enough TMnHO.