Yee-ha! The tabernacle is finished...
Below are some pics. As it stands now, it is ~18" tall, and 24" across the base (the base plate is 4" in the fore-aft dimension). I had it made to where I can put the pivot bolt as low as 14" (we'll see about that when I work with it some more). Most of the base will be under glass when I'm done mounting it, there will be no direct connection thru the deck to the strongback underneath, the whole area will be solid FRP(no core).
I'd never intended to use it much as a tabernacle per se; the reasoning for it was that 1) I wanted to have a VERY secure connection of the mast base to the deck, and 2) to spread the transfer of compression loads onto the under-deck support structure across as large an area as possible.
For reference, if you look back at the images of the internal/underdeck strongback structure, the diagonal arms of the tabernacle line up directly over the vertical supports of the strongback structure, and the tabernacle verticals fall just inside of the gussets between the horizontal beam of the strongback and the vertical supports of same.
That said, with the extra-warm summer we are having and the prediction of an overactive tropical storm season, the ability to drop the mast in my slip and head upriver underneath the 29' vertical clearance bridge next to my marina might just come in handy when ('if at all, and let's hope not', I pray) a whirly-girl comes to visit...
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