Rig changes
Do you mean the headstay/forestay?
You don't necessarily have to loosen it at all, depending on how it is set up now.
Unless you have the rig super tight (in the fore and aft plane), I would start by just adding the adjuster. My guess is that unless it was super tight to begin with, you will see the HS sag as the breeze builds (with the genny unrolled), and you should add backstay tension to limit the sag to a couple of inches, or to settle the HS down if it is bouncing around in the waves. For your particular mast, the biggest effect of the adjuster will be to limit sag and bounce of the HS, rather than bend the mast (which will flatten the main), because the mast section is pretty stiff..
However if you want to use the BS adjuster to induce bend as well, loosening the HS won't help anyway-all that will do is increase aft rake, but not bend.
To get the mast prebent a bit and tease it into more bend as you tension the BS, you need to loosen the aft lowers about one inch, and take up the same amount on the fwd lowers. Then go sailing and play around. If you want more bend, repeat the process again in roughly the same increments until you get it where you want it. One way to tell you have it right is to tension the BS to about 80-90% of max. and see if the main has become VERY flat. Your goal is to achieve a super flat mainsail at 80-90% of available tension on the BS.
Hope this helps-good sailing!
S
