Increasing mast rake in stronger winds

The accepted wisdom is that raking the rig back in higher wind strengths depowers it and/or makes the boat more balanced.   No-one has explained this to my satisfaction.  I sail an RS200 by the way.   When it's windy ( I'm talking about over-powered to the point where one is sheeting out the main regularly to keep the boat flat ) the main forces on the mainsail are ore towards the leech  and as this is further aft than the usual centre of effort I should have thought that raking the mast forward would bring the centre of effort and the centre of lateral resistance from the foils more in balance.

I know all the arguements about the jib slot being opened, the spreader angle changing and the jib fairleads being effectively raised so reducing jib leach tension but all of the these are miniscule effects when compared to the mast shape control caused by block to blocking the kicker.

Can any one help?  I've sailed all this year on one set of rig settings and have not noticed any difference in performance - we always come somewhere between 20-33% back form the winning boat at major events.

Any info welcome - Andi  ( PS sorry about the duplicate message in the wrong category )

My point is that in the past I have changed mast rake in different conditions like every one else.  This year, 2004 I have made a decision not to and we don't seem to have made any loss in windy conditions in fact our best result this year - 8th overall was in a very windy Winter championship sailed in 30mph winds using what most people would call light wind mast rake. 

I'm not saying raking the rig doesn't work, I'm saying I don't know why it does and no-one ( including the experts I have asked ) can tell me why it should work ( at least not in a way that makes sense to me - and I have a very strong science background )

   - Andi

A lot of good points in what you say.  My question about mast rake wasn't really about trying to improve our results - we've got a list as long as your arm of areas we need to improve; I was really trying to get my head round WHY raking the rig works ( if it does ) and what are the feedback effects evident in the way the boat handles and  experienced by the helm and crew that might confirm that the rig change was worth doing.

   - Andi

I have tried moving the centre-board back as an easy-to-do alternative way of making heavy weather beating more effective.  There is a very definate reduction in pointing angle or maybe it's just the tracking angle - either way we certainly dropped lower and lower compared with other boats.  Angling the centre-board back moves the centre of lateral resistance aft - this is the opposite of moving the centre of effort in the sail plan back so perhaps angling the board back needs to be coupled with super mast rake settings to get things back in balance or maybe the small reduction in foil area is responsible for the poor course made good.

I have not tried the combination of angled back c/b and super mast rake aft as in an RS200 the boom gets so low that the boat is hard to sail.  I did have a Topper Spice for a while and the accepted wisdom in that class was to rake the mast and raise the dagger board as much as 30% in high wind so maybe there is something in this idea ( it's just that no-one does it in the 200s ( yet! ) ) 

I find that as the wind pipes up we point higher and higher until we reach a point where we stall the foils and then we have to change mode completely and let the jib out a bit.  The extra fullness in the eased jib creates so much power that the main needs to be dumped a long way out to keep the boat up-right. This occurs about 25mph wind, after this point we are great at surviving but are well off the pace with a very poor pointing angle.

   - Andi