Robi,

After reading you initial post, I thought I had couple of pointers for you, but after reading all the posts, i'm sure your well equipped to test & experiment with your sail.

As a sailmaker, I would like to share some of my experiences with mainsail & leech pressure.

1. Leech pressure is something that most sailors & sail makers strive for & cant allways sem to get enough of.

2. Sail design, more importantly the balance of sail shaping & luff curve after broad seaming is very important to how much leech pressure ( or how the leech stands up) your sail will have & of the any possible "hooking of the leech"

One thing you could try is when you lay the boat on its side to measure all the prebend & spreader rake is too put the sail up (keep the boat on its side) and look at the sail with out the battens & check out how much the battens are actually reducing the sail's cut shape. For example if the top third of the sail looks very full with out the battens & then looks quite flat with the battens in, I would suggest the sail is cut too full for the mast & the battens have been stiffened up to give a reasonable shape - but the sacrifice is too much leech pressure you may not be able to get rid of, no matter how much downhaul you apply.

Worth looking at - up to you.

3. It is not uncommon for the top Tornado sailors to carry a few stiffer battens out onto the course incase the breeze freshens for the second race of two back to back races, enabling the crew to flatten the head of the sail if need be.