Bill I use the same system on the Alpha Omegas, except that now that the front beams are in carbon and no longer require a dolphin striker, the cup is on the beam and the ball is in the mast base. for years we used a captive mast base that was quite a bit different, It consisted of a stainless steel conical pin in the mast base with a SS cup on the beam (formed on top of the D/striker that passed through the beam) and there were two SS plates, one fixed under the cup and one that would pivot independent of the mast rotation above the "pin". These two plates were pinned together with a clevis pin so that the mast could be raised and lowered and sailed with the mast attached to the beam.It works well but there are more parts than the cup and ball. We used it first (the SS one) in about 1972 and used to buy them off the shelf. The cup and ball idea I borrowed from a combination of variations that were around in the late 70's, particularly on the first 5.2 N.A.C.R.A.
So you sailed FD's?? we, (The Fibreglass Factory) have the only FD moulds registered with the FD association here in Australia and they are made now with carbon fibre, aramids and any other thing that the association thinks is "high tech". We keep telling them that it doesn't matter how "high tech" the materials are that are used in their manufacture, if they realy want to go high tech then they should bring the FD out of the 19th century as a design and try to make it more 21st century. They are not impressed when we say that!
Darryl