Scoob,

I also found that a mild mainsheet (=loose leech) is a real pain in the neck too. What happens during a gybe with a loose leech on my boat is this. The large squaretop twists off the lee forcing the boat to round up on the new course pretty high before flapping over. The boom and sail indeed gain alot of momentum if the traveller is far out but the sqauretop is the real kick in butt. Because with a mild leech tension, it crosses very late in the turn, so you feel underpowered, but when it does it immediately starts to draw (drive). This feels like somebody stepped on the gaz, you feel overpowered immediately and are scrambling to the luff hull that is quickly rising.

I think that Hakans way, a loose leech and traveller far out, works because the leech in now so loose that the squaretop is just weather vaning in the flow = no drive. My methode probably worlks because the squaretop (and whole mainsail) remain rather flat in profile and because the head flips to the other side early on in the gybe. You don't get that jump in drive. It more does like decrease proportionally and then increases proportionally again. It dips. This could well mean that everything in between is bad. So mild sheet tension and mild traveller setting are worse than everything tight or everything very loose.

I think I prefer tight in high winds as this way I don't loose time adjusting my sail settings and I can maintain my optimal upwind trim that I found on the first lap, this makes me pretty fast around the C mark. Also in strong winds I want a rather flat mainsail with a mild twist = pretty much the same as on upwind.

I would love to hear more about how you are doing it.

Wouter