The Sheet of the Main, Goes Mainly on the...
My take on it is that traveler location has nothing to do with whether you ever enter a race.
What it boils down to is best location for easy sail control vs. best location to help sell boats by keeping "untidy ropes" out of the cockpit and thereby increasing, in theory, the appeal of the sailboat purchase to beginners and non-sailing members of the family.
And, to give some ammo to the other viewpoint: if you want the maximum coverage of the cockpit with a dodger and a bimini, it's nice to have the traveler on the housetop. The trade-off is that the strain on the mainsheet multiplies exponentially as the strain is taken forward toward the center of the boom, and thus the boom has to be stronger to prevent a break at that point in a hard jibe. Ericson fought "the good fight" to keep the focus on sailing for their designs, sepecially for short-handed (husband and wife) sailing, by keeping that mainsheet either aft or on a bridgedeck. The split-cockpit 27's thru the35's were a good example of this. They used a bridgedeck traveler on the 33 and 36 in the early 80's and of course the Olsons in the late 80's. What with the market being pulled towards RV's-with-masts by the success of Hunter and Catalina in the 80's, it seemed harder and harder to sell boats by designing the deck layout first....
The trend was, and is, to design production boats around a dockside-comfortable interior, with sailing being second on the design-requirement list. Yup, that's just my opinion and worth what you're paying...
I thought Ericson and designer B. King did a masterful job in the 80's with their later models to keep a lot of sailing performance and manners while still giving buyers an attractive and comfortable interior. I have always maintained that Mr. King is one of the best at this difficult compromise...
So, either place for a traveler has it's pluses and minuses -- I used to crew some on an E-27 with the housetop mainsheet system. This involves a winch on the housetop under the dodger because the effort is quite high. At that time I owned a similar size boat with a much larger main and a cockpit traveler that needed only a 4-part Harken tackle to control, right from the helm. OTOH, when it rained I was always in the back of the cockpit with my tiller (transom rudder) and never under the dodger. My buddy with the E-27 was alway dry, sitting up under the rear of the dodger with a short extension on the tiller!
"Choices and Options" as they say....
Best,
Loren in PDX