I'm curious why more people don't raise the mast on their trailer? Is it because they don't like to weight the hulls while the boat's on the trailer or that they need the boat off the trailer to launch it anyway and it's easier to take the boat off the trailer with the mast down? I've always raised the mast singlehanded on the trailer and then used the trailer to launch the boat. With my current thick hulled H17 I've had no concerns about weighting the hulls while on the trailer. Do people think the hulls will take the load without damage when I upgrade to a modern F16 (assuming the trailer uses 4 cat cradles)?

Regarding raising the mast, I've done it many different ways using variations elaborated above by others. They've all worked well and none were very hard. The easist by far for me is using a small winch placed in front of a forward mast support and running the winch line over that to the forestay. Besides tying off the trap wires to the ends of the mainbeam, the only other trick that makes it easy is to start with he mast rotated to 90 degrees and keep it there during raising by running a ratchet block or bungee from the end of the rotator arm to the adjacent main beam end.

Jerry