Trapeze or hike

On a reach what do you think would be quicker in those medium conditions:

Dagger board down more and trapeze?

or

Dagger board up a bit more and hike?

My thinking is that dagger board downish and trapezing increases drag above and below the water. Although trapezing gives a more stable arrangement, dagger board further down also makes the boat more twitchy when planing (or seems to).

Am I overlooking anything?

Thanks for that, what you say makes sense.

I've sailed with a couple of different crew recently, both using different plate hieghts on the fast reaches and it seems to make a lot of difference to how the boat behaves.

So I'm trying to get my head around the relationship between the rudder and plate.... When the plate is downish at speed the rudder gets hyper sensitive, I assume because the boat is pivoting around lots of efficiently working dagger board?

When the plate is upish, the rudder sensitivity feels less extreme, presumeably because the smaller, less efficient pivot (daggerboard) is now stalling slightly during minor direction changes. This stalling creates high drag?

Is this vastely over simplified or just plain wrong? 

As you can tell I'm no expert on hydrodynamics but I want to be able to understand the basics. Now I know the sharp end from the blunt end I reckon getting lots of small things right on a boat is the way forward gfor me at the mo.

Absolutely, use the leverage when it's blowing.........I was thinking more about medium (say force 4) situations when you can be fully powered up in either position on a reach.

Some prefer the plate down a bit more so they can trapeze. I'm not sure it's quicker. Looks good though.

I want to understand what happens with the foils........Anyone recommend a good book on the suject.