...If you look at the picture lower down on the same page
of the Shaw 25, the main is not eased very much...

Gary wrote:
It's out far enough to have the lee spreader pressing against it.

Where?
I see the shadow of the spreaders thru the sail, but I don't
see any place at all... even at the uppermost set... where
the spreaders are pressing inward on the sail. Look at the
batten curve above the sail number.



... Like
Mr. Shaw says in his answer, "We run the gennaker on a tight reach with
the main inside out often so it's not doing much for you then. "


I don't quite see this. The main can be totally flogging on
a tight reach and still have leach tension. And in the
earlier discussion, we weren't talking about a tight reach
either.

In that photo, the main is certainly not holding the mast up

Of course not, there's a giant invisible hand


Gary wrote:
I think I have to go with the designers comments. He trumps you.


Sorry, I didn't realize it was a poker game. He also wasn't
talking about the same boat with the same rig.

Considering that a number of sport boats with frac rigs &
mast head chuts *have* broken their masts, it's kinda dumb
to insist that it can't happen. It's nice that Shaw's design
incorporate cap stays to help keep the mast together...
maybe that's why he put them there.

It's also stupid to insist that a boat (especially a
performance boat) should be totally bulletproof in all
situations. Back in the boom years, a local aircraft company
decided to cash in on their fiberglass molding facility by
building a small racing one-design... a cool boat (the
Skylark) but very heavy... over 200# for a 14 footer. My
father and I were invited to help intorduce them and we
sailed them a bunch of places, and I remember asking one of
the builders 'why did you make the hull so heavy?' and he
replied that it was for strength. He said "The first few
ones we built, we did make them a lot lighter, but you could
just smash in the hull with a hammer and we wanted it
stronger than that."

Ask Mr. Shaw if his boats are totally hammer proof.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King