Ian Nicolson describes a great and very affordable way to do a compression post in his book titled "Build Your Own Sailboat". The post would be easily removable, if you wanted, so you could keep that lovely span, Ebb.
Take two pieces of angle iron, same length, make holes a few inches apart in them as if you were going to bolt them together on one side. These will be set onto the floors under the mast running fore and aft, wide enough apart to accomodate the post. With the post in place, bolts are slipped in ahead of and behind the post, and wooden chocks are used to take up any space between the bolts and the post (My thoughts: one could easily make the holes just far enough apart to obviate the need for the wooden chock blocks, and or have a piece made custom to fit the bottom of the post that wouldn't allow it any movement).
On the upper end of the post are threads, and a cap which screws down onto the post. The cap has 3 holes drilled into it; 2 directly across from each other near the end, and one slightly below the other two which is threaded to take a bolt.
Put the post into place, stick a rod or screwdriver into the two cap holes and use it as a lever with which to screw the cap up to the underside of the mast foot/pad/deck. Once it is adjusted properly, put a bolt into the threaded hole and tighten it to prevent the cap from screwing down accidentally (loosening the post).
Simple, effective, affordable, and easily doable with common pipe and fittings, I believe. The pipe could be blasted and painted w/a tough epoxy paint, or a sleeve could be made out of the same cloth as the interior finishings, and zipped around the pipe to make it esthetically pleasing.
I've been trying to think of drawbacks, but none have come to mind as yet.
One other thing I can see in the above picture which I would not have noticed if I hadn't seen the same on Craig's "Faith" just a few days ago - the longitudinal stringers on both your boat and Craigs are mounted much lower than the ones on my Ariel. From the pic, yours are about midway up the opening in the forward bulkhead, where mine are approx 2/3 the way up. I will put a measurer on mine and see where they lie exactly in relation to the deck, but a ballpark guess would put them 3-4" higher up the hull than are yours and Craigs. Since my boat was made near the end of production (#422), and information about these boats is mostly lost in the mists of time, I'll always wonder if this was a Carl-specified change, or just something which came about due to the decision of some laborer in the factory... Remember that mine was also missing diagonal supports on the main bulkhead, much to the chagrin of my compression beam.
And another edit: Your stringers run forward of the fore bulkhead all the way to the bow it looks like, where mine start/stop just aft of it.
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