My Commander's mast Base was in pretty sad state (the original was some sort of wood laminate). It did its job appropriately enough, but its best days had long since passed.
I remember reading posts where the Design for the Ariel's mast base (Included in the owner's manual Pg. #166) was confused by some of us with the Commander's. They are indeed DIFFERENT. I myself started going down that route, but was lucky to notice this early on... (Phew!).
The Ariel's base rests on a level part of the deck, while the Commander's base sits on a slope resulting in a significant angle that the base needs to compensate for... hence the design difference.
Below is a .Pdf with a fabrication drawing for reference. My submission for the 'Commander' portion of the owner's manual! If you deliver this to a fabricator / Machine shop, they should be able to deliver exactly what you need (as long as you have a Commander - see the manual for the Ariel mast step).
I do not know if my old mast base was the factory original piece. It was nicely worked out of a piece of wood laminate, but it had not been maintained and the top layers were weathered badly. It was solid and fortunately still managed to do its job properly, but it was not pretty...
After considering several materials for the replacement base (I considered a similar wood laminate, a solid piece of hardwood, or a piece of high-tech plastic), I decided to go with Aluminum. Apparently, Pearson offered an aluminum replacement base for the Commander at some point. Durability and ease of maintenance ruled the day. I imagine the aluminum base will last longer than I will...
As I came out of the educational egg as an engineer, it was also a bit of welcome challenge to design and have this puppy fabricated... A few friends in the trades helped keep costs low by helping with finding surplus materials / fabrication / machining skills. Thanks to all!
In the end I had to buy a NEW small slice of an 8" round aluminum billet the minimum charge was more than I thought it would be initially, but there were not many scrap pieces of 8" round Aluminum billet laying around...
The hardest part to machine is the slight radius (R= 64") on the botton of the base. (this is true for both the Ariel & Commander bases) This radius was accomplished largely by hand, as proper machining would have been quite pricy $$$... But a great fit is achievable with a bit of sweat...
My hand written dimensions on the drawing attached are my AS-BUILT revisions. This matches the dimensions of the base currently on the Mephisto Cat...
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