I agree that it was difficult to truly pitch-pole the N20. It would usually stuff to a complete stop and then flip sideways.

And to Bacho, it does look you've got a great lake boat design with the mods. Guess you don't have to worry much about groundswell

Now, with the larger beam and sail area, are we changing the CE location? Would he need to modify board size or placement to balance the CLR?

Be warned many have gone down the wider beam route with all the trimmings and it has turned into a frankenightmare with big out of pocket. I think if you run the numbers you'll find yourself close to a used F20c!

I don't want to do anything that is not reversible at the moment. What kind of nightmares do you have in mind?

Back in the day a couple of H21 guys went 11 feet wide, which is just a tramp, beams and standing rigging and turned out to be a complete bust but even at that it was a fair amount of cash to get there. The boat simply wasn't designed to be 11 feet wide and it was $$ wasted. They both went back to the 9'6" beam (stock) and never spoke of it again.

Yes exactly. You are losing some counter balance and in order to keep the boat upright, you will be sailing a deeper and less powerful angle. Your speed will drop because the power (and resulting leverage on the bows) will reduce.

I learned a bit about this by sailing the A-cat. The use of the wild thing on a-cats is a little counter-intuitive. There's more to consider with it than just reducing wetted surface area - it's also a method to reduce power and sail deeper. Born out of surviving heavy air (which is quite a learning curve on the a-cat) I learned that keeping the boat flat and sitting on the corner of the boat was not an effective method of safely or conservatively sailing the boat downwind. It's quite the opposite and is pitch pole prone that way. Flying a hull in that position at a normal "skimming the water" attitude was worse now that all of that pressure was reduced to one hull. However, flying a hull high in that same setting finds the boat settling down and becoming a whole new animal. However, it takes a bit of commitment to get it to that point. The additional heeling serves to depower the boat and to make sure it keeps heeling, we scoot more inboard than usual. This also helps to relieve some of the power in the sail and reduce the pressure on the bow. The groove gets pretty narrow but you can manage the heel with the mainsheet and your sailing angle to keep the boat depowered. It's counter intuitive but with more wind pressure, you want to sheet in to heel more and steer deeper. This results in less pressure on the bow while still maintaining a good amount of speed and a great angle. That said, curved boards have kinda changed this game by allowing the leeward hull/bow to resist more power and we're seeing trapezing downwind.

The same, although not nearly as dramatic, is true of sailing a spinnaker boat. You can depower by heeling the boat more and flying higher or sail a little lower with less righting leverage. The trick is to find the best combination of leverage, hull height, and angle. I was getting beat downwind at Tradewinds (18knots) by teams that were keeping their weight just a little more inboard. The skipper was scooting into the hiking strap and the crew, although still trapezed, was more upright. They were sailing about the same speed but a little lower than I. It took me a few races to figure it out and make similar adjustments. Less is sometimes more.

I think it was all that racket your boat was making downwind that distracted you from making those adjustments sooner. Jeeze, watching that video you took made me hit the mute button ...