Good morning everybody (or evening/afternoon depending on where you are). This whole conversation reminds me of the old saying opinions are like a$$holes etc etc.

Time to answer some questions...

1. Do you design for strength or stiffness? 90% of the structure on a boat is actually designed for stiffness, where you are considering allowable deflection and using the Young's modulas to determine what you'll actually get. Checking that a part is "strong" enough if often secondary to the stiffness requirement.

2. Why use flat bar instead of wire. Using wire is fine, however, it requires some more difficult custom parts or the use of expensive tune buckles, neither of which I thought suited this project. The system shown on the drawings is basically the same as what is featured on the paper tiger and it has worked very well for a long time and is easy to build by the home handy man assuming you can find someone to perform 1 aluminium weld. My experiance is that the cost of this weld is usually about 1 case of beer.

Gato's system is even better (although a little heavier) in terms of its ability to be built at home, however, it also requires the use of a welder. With this in mind I'd recommend people make their decision based on what welding technology they have access to. My drawings suggested people buy an off the shelf mast step, however I'll now be recommending Gato's detail.

To be perfectly honest, the other reason I went for the flat bar approach was so the boat would look as much like mum/dads as possible.