Remove Lower Shrouds?

[Brion Toss]

Hello,
The fore-and-aft sweep of the lower shrouds locates the mast in that plane, bend or no, and deals with the cyclic as well as standing force there. With your mast, moving the forward mast to athwartships wouldn't affect bend ó there isn't any ó but you would be leaving the aft lowers' pull unopposed, and this would induce bend, and not the good kind. Early Baba's had the arrangement you are proposing, and they all had inverted masts, which contributed to weather helm. They also had aft-led intermediates to make matters even worse, but that was just gravy.
Lots of boats have more sweep aft than forward, making for a slightly less problematic arrangement, but not by much.
Therefore, you might consider losing the aft lower as well, and just having an athwartships lower. It would have to be heavier wire, so we need to know if the chainplate is up to the challenge. Likewise you'd probably need to change the upper tang. Run the numbers on this. If they look good, you'll have the solution.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss