Michael-
The reason your jib foot is short is because your jib has battens, like a H 16, right? (As I remember from my forays as an occassional Sol crew MANY years ago!) And it cleats to the fore beam. Check out the Alerion web pages for the "newest" on this type of thing- the jib boom actually rotates from a fitting in the deck (it is curved down in the front) so it's "stiff" in the vertical sense so one can control leach tension separately from angle.
This would be hard to do on a cat. See the Supercat pages for a relatively inexpensive way to convert your jib to self tacking w/wo the jib boom-

Kirt