Just curious but if anything is forward of the rudder wouldnt that make the boat incredibly hard for the boat to track a straight line?
No. Consider this
very basic explanation: If you remove the rudder completely, a rudderless boat will sail dead straight if the center of effort of your sails is directly over the keel and hull's center of effort. The rudderless boat will always round up if the sail plan's center of effort is aft of the keel and hull's. The rudderless boat will always head down if the sail plan's CE is forward of the hull and keel's CE... This is how a windsurfer steers, by moving the sail fore and aft.
For most boats, a little weather helm is desirable, and can be affected by tweaking mast rake forward or aft, moving the CE of the sail plan. A lot of weather helm though, (boat wanting to turn up) will be bad, as it will cause fatigue at the tiller, as you are always having to provide input, and it is slow as you are always dragging a "brake" in the form of a rudder off-center.
Your rudder contributes to the center of effort of the underwater parts of the boat, such that the CE moves aft slightly with respect to the rudderless boat above, but its primary function is to affect change to course. Left un-tended, the boat's "desire" to go straight or not is a function of the relative placement of the sail plan's CE with respect to the CE of the underwater portion of the boat. Ever steer by simply adjusting your sails? It is totally doable...
For the rudder, the discussion will be typically what force input required to affect a change in course, as opposed to simply holding course. For a rudder whose area is wholly behind the hinge, (pintles and gudgeons) the force required to be input by you will be "X" as an arbitrary value. If you put a small amount of the rudder in front of its hinge, you shrink the moment arm between the rudder's CE and the hinge, resulting in you needing force "less than X" at the tiller to steer.
As you put more of the rudder in front of the hinge, the rudder's moment arm continues to shrink, further lowering the amount of effort you need to input via the tiller to affect a course change, but you can only go so far. The portion of the rudder in front of the hinge point "wants" to be behind the hinge, trailing like streamers in the wind, (or trailing as a rudder, duh
) as it were. There will be a point where the rudder will want to oscillate. I am totally unsure of the ratio and it probably varies based on rudder form, but there will be a point where too much rudder in front of the hinge is bad, even if the effort required at the tiller is still decreasing.
Just FYI, If at the extreme oposite, all the rudder's area is forward of the hinge, you will need to input force "X" or greater basically all the time, as the rudder will want to flop violently around, so that it is trailing, rather than leading. Such a boat would be very difficult to control. Your best example again will be to consider how hard you fight your tiller when backing in reverse, where in effect, all or most of your rudder is now "ahead" of the hinge...
Again, this is a very simple explanation, but hopefully it makes the topic more clear?
