My NSM4 has already been converted to deck stepped rig, however the sheave positions for the shroud and lowers look wrong. on almost all other Merlins I have looked at the shrouds are in front of the lowers, however due to the angles of the sheaves on my boat this is not possible. how important in the grand scheme of things is this? would it be better to adjust the spreaders to suit. please see attached photo.

If it works it's ok. It looks ok. Is there any sign of stress on the joints close bye.

Do's your crew sit on the spin sheet on a close reach.

Hi broz,

we only got to sail it once last season before a friendly Laser stuck its bow through the side and we haven't had the kite up yet. it doesn't seem to be a problem. with regards to the shrouds sheaves, the rear ones are beefed up and bolted through whereas the front ones are just screwed. the main reason for asking is that there is little or no deflection in the shroud from the spreaders. I wonder if they need lengthening.

Smoke on the Water (NSM2) has lowers in front of the shrouds at very similar angles to yours; all works well. I can get plenty of bend in the mast with mine but you do need to use a rig tension gauge as it is surprising how tight they have to be; spreader deflection on mine is about 20cm.

The effect of having the lowers base further forward is that they have more sideways effect than fore and aft. This means you will probably need more lowers tension for a given outcome than a standard boat, but given that the shroud base position is almost certainly entirely different to a standard this is not something i'd worry about.

As long as the sheaves are secure and the system works i'm sure youll be fine.

Looks fine, leave as it is. 3646 was designed with lowers in front. See photo in link below.

I did the same thing with Encore Fumee, an NSM4 as well. In fact my lowers are positioned even further forward than yours. It all works fine, although Chris M is quite correct, I have to put on far more lowers tension that the guys with Winders and similar at our club with the lowers behind the shrouds. I also get a lot more top mast bend at times but it doesn't have a huge effect on boatspeed - well not as much as a few bad tacks and picking the wrong side of the beat! I intend to move the spreaders further forward at some point to compensate a bit more (and as suggested by Taxi when he looked at it a little while back) but haven't got round to it yet as they are in the maximum forward position right now and I am still puzzling over a solution  that doesn't involve changing the whole spreader bracket on the mast!