Steve Daniels, Seek of Spam wrote:

On Thu, 27 May 2004 12:02:09 +1200, something compelled Navigator
, to say:


Cunningham: Remove all horizontal wrinkles, in the heavier puffs pull
very hard to bend the mast which will flatten the sail and twist open
the top batten


I thought the purpose of a cunningham was to tension the luff
past what is possible with just the halyard. Sounds like
something you'd do in high wind.

Yes, it also helps control draft (as Doug said) which on older and
(especially on) non-high tech sails has the nasty habit of moving aft a
lot as wind load increases


Cheers.