Thanks for the help Dave! For those of you who haven't gotten a chance to chat with Dave; he is a hoot! I need to find his house, roll up with a few cold ones and just listen for a couple of hours! He is more connected than we will ever know.
As far as a fix goes, I am not sure quite what to do yet. Doug J mentioned elongating a couple of the holes in the system to accommodate the mis-alignment. Based on a couple of ball park calcs, if I elongate the holes the 1/2" needed to get the base to line up, the side to side sway (slop) at the top of the mast will be a bit over 12"! Not catastrophic, but not desirable either.
The problem seems to be that the mis-alignment is only in the fore and aft direction, not in the vertical direction, if I change the length of the struts, I think I will be inducing stresses on the raised side of the triangle. If the struts are currently the correct length when the mast is up and I change their length, all those forces will be imparted to the deck hardware.
Woooof! The only "real" way to fix this issue without compromise is to remake the port and starboard mounting brackets with correctly aligned holes.
Before I do that though, I think I am going to try elongating the holes in the brackets about 1/4". I can quite easily "scooch" the mast 1/4"; the full 1/2" was quite difficult.
This way the mast can only "wag" about 6" when it's horizontal and will be able to sway less at it approaches vertical.
If that feels too lose, I think I will just re-make the brackets.
If it's too floppy, I guess I am off to the stainless steel store!
What do you think?