Last evening we have opened the beam, and came to the joyful conclusion that the compression plate is in our case a sort of compression tube of about 30 cm in length. It was made out of aluminum, so no galvanic corrosion, and rather easy to get out. After some serieus hits with a heavy hammer and a peace of wood, it was "movable". We made a hook out of an iron tube, and hit it out. The bold was indeed welded and broken. Due to the fact it was spot welded, we were able to replace it on the same plate. (however it's not very necessary to replace such a plate with an original if you would break it, as it realy is nothing special at all)

The biggest trouble we had was getting one of the beam bolds back in as it needed a very high torque. However with a bit of grease it finally went in there.

For now we tensioned the nut on the dolphin striker to the point which it had before. Howeverwhen looking at all of you're posts, I try to understand how to measure this, as we do not know if it was on the right spot before. I've studied the Inter 18 Manual, but without any result. (nothing mentioned there)

At the moment we have the cat on our trailer, as we're intending to go to a race this weekend (but it seems the weather is not cooperating)so the mast is off. Should we set the dolphin striker with the mast up or down?

What is exactly the mast POST? Is this the threaded end with the ball on top? In that case no measurement there.

With the mast off, we discovered yesterday that there was almost no tension on it. We also tried to figure out what is th working principle of the dolphin striker, and to be honest were not able to figure it out 100%. Can anybody explain?