Well john,

Can you say that you have ever seen the superwing mast, let alone sailed with one ?

(There is one right back at you, so I guess we are both guilty here)

I'm not critizing against the approach you've written down. It will work, and get you close to optimal even, I even wrote that down. I just wanted to caution agains the believe that spreader rake and prebend isn't important. Get these wrong to a signifcant level (for mainsail with a given luff curve) and it will result in noticeable damage to performance. I found this to be the case on both my Taipan F16 with the superwing mast as my Prindle 18 with a normal teardrop shape mast. And in no unmistakeable terms.

I guess I have just as much right in presenting my comments as you. Considering I can trade off your thousant hour experience on other masts with actual experience tuning my own superwing mast.

For clearity; most damaging is to sail with too much prebend. You can often get away with too little prebend and pull on the downhaul harder even if it is still not optimal. Your approach will lead to the last case and thus get a pretty good basic setting.

Regards,

Wouter