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Thanks 49208, good stuff. You are right. My diagram was intentionally a simplification. It is. Now I understand that my previous diagram was only telling part of the story. It had omitted the major fact that pulling cunningham not only directly pulls along the straight line from the...

I followed 49208's advice and made one more diagram to show what happens to cross sections of a sail when Laser mast is bent I came to a conclusion that pulling tension to cunningham does NOT always move the sail's draft forward. This may sound a bit unorthodoxy but on the other hand my sketches...

This is a very good point and I had missed it. I have to think more about the mechanism here, how the cunningham tension changes the sail shape in this case. Anyone with a good explanation? I don't quite see how stretching luff here pulls additional cloth from leech to luff nor how it impacts...

LooserLu: Maybe my description was incomplete. Don't think the point D in my diagram as a painted point in the sail. Instead, it is the location of maximum draft - think of the highest point in a hill. So I believe that my diagram shows correctly the location of the new draft maximum, or hill...

Alistair426, thanks for the link. That did provide one explanation. "... the Cunningham control tensions the front of the luff of the sail, making it closer to the tension of the leach, so making the leach relatively less tight and more prone to open. Another way of looking at it would be to...

Thanks for your replies fracisco and 49208 but they don't quite give me the insight I am looking for. fracisco: The descriptions in http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~sailing/U...unningham.html tell what pulling cunningham does and why to do it but not really the mechanics why pulling the cunningham...

Common understanding seems to be that pulling tension to cunningham moves the sail's draft forward. It also opens the leech, flattens the main and removes the wrinkles along the luff but they are not relevant in my question. Why does pulling cunningham make the sail cloth behave like this...