Thanks, Wouter and Mary.
I may try the pool noodle or gunwhale bumper idea but I think I'd prefer the purpose built stern rests. I'm worried that shipping from overseas will be prohibitive unless I could get them sent with someones boat in a container. Maybe it would be less expensive to just have them made at a foam shop. I'm surprised they're not available in the US! Sounds like something that Online Marine Store at Cat Sailor would sell a bunch of (hint)! Wouter, if it's no trouble, I'd appreciate if you could post the sources you know of. I think I've heard you can get them from AHPC but I don't know if those would fit other boats such as my current H17 or the Blade. By the way, do you know if Matt sells them for the Blade? Thanks!
Jerry

I do all mast raising and lowering when the boat is on the trailer. That way you can leave the spipole, halyards, shrouds, trapwires, etc attached which saves a lot of time setting up. (And because I'm lazy! )

A couple of weeks ago I fitted a small $30 winch to the front trailer mast support, all I have to do now is:
-Attach the mast base to the front beam/ball.
-Lay the mast at an horizontal angle so that one of the shrouds is slightly tensioned (This is to prevent it swaying sideways).
-Attach the wire from the winch to a trapeze wire.
-Winch away as fast as you can

The same thing goes for lowering, but at some point the pulling angle becomes to steep so you really want someone to help you with that. Also I will replace the winch-rope I use now with steel cable or dyneema for its strength and non-stretch properties.
I'm surprised so little people use winches since they're so easy for pulling your boat on the trailer, etc.

I have, on occasion, had to raise the mast myself on an N20. Being about 80 kgs myself, I seek all the assistance I can. In these situations I have found it helpful to use the spin halyard, and raise the mast while it is still on the trailer

My trailer has the bonus of having a mast cradle on the rear that holds the mast above the rear beam when trailering. I use this as a cradle while I am setting up.

I slack the shrouds to the top hole on their adjustment, allowing the mast to lean slightly forward of vertical once the mast is raised. Don't forget the pin in the mast base!

Next, I run the spin halyard as normal, and attach one end to the roof rack of my vehicle (pulling the trailer), or the brush bars on the front (if it's a truck). The other end goes through the spin halyard block as normal.

To raise the mast, I merely stand on the rear beam and bring the mast out of the cradle to my shoulder. Once I walk it up the tramp to vertical, I tighten the spin halyard and cleat it. This acts as a "temporary" forestay until I can put the forestay pin in the bridle. There isn't too much tension on the spin halyard because the shrouds are loose enough to let the mast lean forward of vertical.

Once the forestay is attached, I ease the spin halyard and untie it from the vehicle.

I am using the flat fenders from Boat US or West MArine. They're 3" thick and 6" wide about 16 inches long. Have a grommet in each end so you just run a retaining line through them. The Fun noodles compress under the boat weight and they seemed to wear pretty quickly.

Easiest way is to use a winch off your front mast support.
You'll need a pair of stabilizer lines tied to the front crossbeam to minimize sidesway, I have a couple 6 foot pieces of 3/8 line (that also are used to tie stuff down when you're packed for trailering.)
Study the EZ Stepper in the catalogues, you'll get the idea.
If you use a winch then you don't have to worry about dropping your stick in the middle of the process. Takes a lot of worry out when you're sorting out through the inevitable tangles.

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