
Got mine last year, for my wife and I to learn to sail. Lots of fun and fright at times. Interesting about your mast. I think the mast hole on mine was once replaced. My mast base
is too small in diameter, but someone fiberglassed 'bulges' at the bottom and top of the section of mast where it sits in the hole (hourglass shaped sort of), to make for a good fit. Also the bottom of the mast hole has a metal plate with a raised central "nipple" that fits into a matching plate on the mast bottom. I just did a bunch of minor fiberglass repairs, chasing a leak and reinforcing the mast base, mast hole, cockpit, and hull. You can see my boat looks kind of rough, it's been used, but still sails great. But it drained a lot of water when I pulled it out last fall. The deck surface has a lot of crazing and is rather dull, but I figure it's less slippery and appears intact. I'll bet a good car wax would work to polish it, but I'm only guessing.
If you look close at my enlarged pic, there is a small pulley at the base of the mast. Looks like it's for the halyard, to help raise the sail, but I'm not sure how to use it. Does your boat have that pulley? I find raising the sail alone is challenging, a definite two hand operation, to keep feeding the sail into the mast groove while pulling on the halyard. I lubed the groove with silicone spray, but still it takes a pretty strong pull, the further up the sail goes. At the same time it's difficult to keep the sail feeding cleanly into the groove with my other free hand. Do you have this problem? Perhaps the bottom of the mast groove is too worn/wide, or maybe this is just the way it is. We talked about having the sailmaker sew on little attachments (snails?) that would ride easily up the mast groove, rather than feeding the sail itself into the groove, make it easy to hoist. But I like how the sail and mast form a clean unit for airflow, and the ability to overrotate the mast while sailing, to tweak the shape of the sail.
Lee In VT (Lake Champlain)