DSC00434 Here's a pic of my old Gin Pole. Anyone can make one of these. It doesn't have to come apart and you don't need to use stainless steel hardware. The Gin pole provides the angle needed to raise your mast by using the Jib halyard and a boom vang or mainsheet blocks. You could also mount a small boat winch on the Gin pole and use that to pull your mast up. I have the yoke tied to the mast near the goose neck fitting and the end of my Gin Pole is about 1" to 2" from my forestay when the mast is up. If the Gin Pole is too short, the boom vang will have a tendency to pull the yoke out of the mast once the mast is up. If you set the Gin Pole too low on the mast, the Gin Pole will be too long and you'll have trouble reaching the end of the pole to snap your bridles in when the mast is laying horizontal and ready to be raised. For this reason I chose to set my Gin Pole so that the yoke is near the goose neck fitting. Note how close the blocks of the boom vang are in this picture. Before I inverted the line locking cam on the pulling block, I used to extend the boom with a wire tail piece that cam off my back stay that was connected to that triangular plate. By inverting the cam on the block, I was able to do away with the tail piece and be able to connect the block to a shackle on my bow stem chainplate. This gave me more space for my blocks. The is another reason why the Gin Pole needs to be set near the goose neck fitting. If you decide to use a boat winch to pull your mast up, you could mount the Gin Pole lower but the lower the Gin Pole on the mast, the longer it has to be.