[wizardscocoon]

A sailboat is a collection of many different "balance points" and if any of these are moved (because of some modification) you will need to do something to bring the overall balance back into postion. You can''t estimate the balance of the sail plan on the sq. ft. area of the sails alone. You need to know there the center of effort is for each sail, and then the combination of the two or three etc. The combined center of effort is the point everyone is talking about. And by adding size of the fore sails you are moving that center of effort forward, add to that, the fact you''re moving the foresails farther forward again moving the center of effort of those sails even more forward... but the center of effort of the main sail didn''t move, so the combined center of effort is farther forward than the boat was designed to handle.... the result count be not good.

As someone else stated, a boat is a comeplete system. changing one thing has affects of other areas, sometimes to the point of actually hurting proformance more than the change helped it.... let alone the safety considerations.