[quote=mgoltsman]Photos will have to wait till later, but here is the description of a very simple mast cradle that's working well on my P16. I had it on the highway over 65 and on side roads with potholes (at slower speeds), and never had a problem (yet). And the whole thing was under $15 and half hour of work at most.
I went to Home Depot and picked two concentric pieces of rubber piping that would fit into each other - not sure what they were but picked the two with biggest diameters and sturdiest walls that would fit into each other snugly. Put 3" wood screws through them so they won't separate, dremeled off the parts of the screws sticking out inside the assembly. Made two notches in the assembly - a smaller one on the narrower side for traveler rail and a larger one at 90 degree angle on the wider side for the mast. You can notch it with a sawzall or a utility knife, and it's easy to tune the size and shape of the notches to your boat.
To place the mast on the cradle, put the cradle across the rear cross bar, traveler rail in the notch, drop an end of a shorty bungee tie through the center of the assembly and hook it on the pad eye (the loop on the crossbar used to tie off the traveler line). Put the mast in the upper groove (narrow side down), wrap the bungee tie around it two or more times (enough to give it decent tension), pull the loose end back down through the assembly center hole and hook it again on the pad eye.
I DON'T think this thing is tall enough (about 4") to let the mast clear the rudder crossbar. You would have to rig something more clever. But without rudders, this thing works great.[/quote]
No HTML tags allowed (except inside [code][/code] tags)
