I understand the type of sailing you're doing as we've spent a lot of time in a river in the Calif. Delta out of Stockton. We got to the point where we motor west and then downwind sail back to Stockton. Last month we moved the boat to San Francisco so we can actually sail. I've learned that when we reef early it actually turns out to be the right time - not early. After our first reef we still have a full jib and stay sail. We reduce the jib first but usually have some jib up. In the past we would have just the jib up, usually without the stay sail. We now sail almost always with the stay sail up, something we also learned from Dave King. We have roller furling on both sails making it easy to adjust sail combinations.
The reason I say our mast being almost straight was a mistake, was that we had the bowsprit off to be polished and hurriedly put things together to get to the Bay and Rendezvous. I checked the mast and it was almost straight, but didn't have time to make any changes. After sailing some I believe it sailed better when I had about 4" of rake as it was before. But that's just our boat with the sails we have. I think Bud calls for 6" of rake. This is what we've found sailing our boat, others may be quite a bit different.
Jim