Bill (weh5748), sorry, I didn't realize those posts weren't showing up for the trailersailors.com forum. After a year or so, I think posts get moved from the main forum to an archive forum, which is probably what happened.
I did a quick search, and I found Judy Blumhorst's posting to her newer mast raising solution.
http://bbs.trailersailor.com/forums/potter/index.cgi/read/105135 But if this post gets archived, here's her raising and lowering video on YouTube:
http://youtu.be/aIXH9jos-cI and the system rigging video:
http://youtu.be/ZBNSyhnfo4E
Quick description, she mounts a gin pole with winch to the front of the mast tabernacle. This pole is anchored to the stemhead fitting, and has a rope bridle side to side, fixing it in position. The brake style winch on the pole is attached to a bail on the mast. The mast baby stays are connected to the winching line, which wind up in front of the mast, and are attached at deck level, just in front of the mast pivot, to genoa tracks on the cabin top.
As you can see from the video, her system clearly works. I take issue with some of the finer details of the engineering. As you can tell from the video, when the mast is fully up, the position and length of the mast baby stays make them very tight. Seems there is a lot of strain in the system. If I were to do similar, I would probably measure carefully, and attach lines to the fittings with close tolerances. I'd maybe even use single braid Dyneema, which will allow easy brummel splices to exact lengths. Also, the mast stays seem loose during raising and lowering, which you can see from the lowering section of the video, allows some lateral movement as she nudges the mast into the cradle. Again, careful mounting of baby stays such that they pivot from the mast pivot point, and at the same vertical height of the mast step pivot, should eliminate this and provide fixed tension. If you had stanchion bases forward and aft of the mast step pivot, I would make a bridle from stanchion base to base, with a SS ring at the correct height of the pivot point. Again, this would be fairly easy to fix the position with splices of single braid.
Some people have rigged the gin pole with stays such that there is purchase from the gin pole to the stemhead fitting, possibly using mainsheet tackle or vang tackle, such that the connection from gin pole to mast is fixed length, and the gin pole is intended to pivot. With such a system, the bridle for the gin pole must again attach to deck level at the pole pivot point, which seems to be the biggest problem. I think that Judy's solution of keeping the pole fixed has great merit, as the side bridle can be attached to anywhere on deck to provide an unmoving tripod.
If you did use a pivoting gin pole, and you had deck attachment points fore and aft of the mast pivot, such as stanchion bases, you could easily rig a bridle with ring in line with the pivot point, and attach both gin pole and mast baby stays to this ring, allowing them all to maintain tension while pivoting. 1/8" Dyneema single braid (such as Sampson Amsteel Blue) would be an easy spliced solution for bridle and stays, and would be overkill as far as strength.
For me, I don't have to lower the mast on the water (say, to get under a bridge), so I just rely on an 8' mast crutch mounted to my rudder gudgeons on the transom. This starts my mast at an angle, and I can straddle the mast facing aft, and lift it up. Or, in the case of this fall, lower it into the crutch while controlling side to side. Hah, essentially I become the tripod... The guy helping me lower said he didn't take any weight on the line I gave him - but I really wanted him there "just in case." We'll see how spring raising goes this year.
Brian
