I suspect what the boat yard manager was referring to was that compared to other 30' boats, the Catalina has a bigger and heavier section. This is true. We in the C30 family call them telephone polls and they are heavy stiff sections. Very stiff and when somebody askes about "bending the mast" with the aft stay tensioner, we just laugh. It don't bend. I have a very powerful aft stay tensioning system, but it is not for bending the mast. It is used to tension the forestay to reproduce luff sag.
With the exception of the very oldest boat built in 1975 and 76, the mast and boom of the C30 remained the same for the Mk1, 2 & 3. From day one, they offered 4 configurations. The two most common are standard and tall rig w/ bow sprit. You could also order the boat with a standard rig with bow sprit or tall rig without bow sprit but those are very uncommon. The rigging size stayed the same for all years although they did make some changes to the chainplates in the middle of the Mk1 run.
