Sure, one can do things with different battens or shaved battens. Hell I have a set of extra stiff top battens and even had the battens put in the wrong way on my Prindle 18 in heavier air. But none of these are very good things to start fiddling with before you have totally exhausted the normal tools like prebend, downhaul and mainsheet. Simply because the combined effect of these last three is much greater than the combined effect of any shaving etc. Also I feel that people go on the assumption that something is wrong with the boat over something is wrong with their way of trimming it. Or in simple words : How big is the chance that the sailmaker used the wrong batten for the sail he made in relation to the magnitude of the likelyhood that the sailor is not trimming/tuning it in the right way ?

I would first go sailing for a season and systematically analyse all possible trim settings and only then start thinking about doing things like shaving battens and putting them in with the rear in front.

Robi should first hunt for the right prebend, mainsheet tension, downhaul tension

Wouter