Rockter. I am with you in this discussion.
Alex, to me you are the main reason I keep reading sailnet and I respect you and your family, but in this case I think you are oversimplifying and ignoring other forces acting on the boat.
Let me ask you, Alex and Dog: If baron Munchhausen is pulling his hair really hard and the force of pull is going upwards - will he eventually pull himself out of the swamp?
No, because there other forces working in opposite direction and the whole action is cancelled out.
Same with the position of the traveller.
I agree 100% with Alex, that moving traveller to leeward side reduces the heel - but that is because doing so you changes a lot of other parameters - including sail trim, forces on the mast, forces on the wang, forces on the sheets, ....
So, for all practical aspects of sailing you are right.
The only problem is that if you want to keep the sail
in exactly the same position and trim there are other controls which you have to change a lot - and even so it is not likely one would be able to trim the sail in the same shape. Because if you would - then you would not need the traveller in the first place.
If you take your picture in post 233:
To keep the sail on the lest boat to have the same twist and trim you would need a lot of wang tension. and the main sheet tension would be a lot less then in the right boat to keep the boom at the same angle...
And
because the sail is not rigid - we most likely
can not get the same shape.
We are arguing about details, but I think we all agree that reducing the wang to leeward reduces the heel. So, let us go sailing.
