Dennis that is interesting. Again I don't have a point of reference with the J30 or monohulls. My sailing experience is with high performance catamarans. I would expect that in light air the "feel" of the rudder and its effects would always be very minimal. However, what I think I would be more interested in is the actual result of minor helm input movements in changing the track angle of the boat. A wider (lower aspect ratio) rudder at slow speeds has to be more effective at changing the angle than the higher aspect ratio rudder. This would be the result of both the increased surface area, in my balanced rudder that is about 144 square inches more than the std. and then the much lower stall angle with this increased width. At these very low speeds the "balanced" feature isn't as important as the increased surface area and the stall angles that come with the increased width and surface area.
At higher speeds the penalty for this balanced design as I have laid it out is the increase in wetted surface area and that is then traded for reduced helming effort, which was my primary goal.
