[Heli-Pilot]

After viewing Martha's foremast rig for some time and being envious of how their sail track on the aft side of their mast facilitates ease of bending on and storing their fisherman staysail in a deck bag, I am going to try this is well on Prudence. I have enough 7/8" stainless track to attach to the foremast for the job, but about 3/4ths of the way up the mast, I have 4 spliced soft eyes on hounds that serve as lower shrouds (courtesy of Brion a couple of years ago) to contend with that are in the way so as to prevent merely fastening the track to the mast. I'd really rather not just bend the track over the soft eyes..very tacky.

So, instead of using teak as a backing like Martha did (very expensive, that teak) to "jump" over the soft eyes splices, I was wondering if marine starboard would be a suitable material? I could use Delrin, but that's almost as spendy as teak. My idea was to run the starboard up to the point of the soft eyes at the bottom, and then another piece from the top of the soft eyes to the mast head. This would leave a gap of approx 3-4 inches in the starboard with the soft eyes filling that gap area and basically allow a 'plumb' vertical fitting of the track.

Thoughts?

Roy