Scott Laughlin here. I've read several posts on solo mast stepping and one common problem that nobody has posted a solution to is that last effort to place the ball into the socket after the mast is almost up. I even broke the mast base off one time because of this mis-alignment. To solve this problem I drilled another hole in my mast base to line up with the Hobie 14 hole. Mine is a Hobie 16. This way, I use two pins - or screwdrivers in my case. Now my mast ball goes right in the socket every time with no panicking or pulling back on the mast, etc. Here's a photo:
