spreader/mast rake question

[Gorlog]

Hey yall,
I am instaling a new, well actually old mast on by boat. The boat is mcgregor venture 21 (I believe). The mast was at one point fitted to a catamaran. I happened to pick the mast up on e-bay. It had no means to mount it on the boat, no gooseneck, no spreaders, and no mast head.
Here's the kicker, I am an aprentice in a machine shop, and to make these things for myself is not a problem. In fact I have already machined the mast mount (it's a trailerable boat with a tabernackle fitting), the gooseneck, and the mast head. I would be finishing the spreader mount right now. The problem is that I am not that familiar with sailboat functions, plans and proportions.
In my boat the base of the mast mounts forward of the chainplates. I was machining the spreader mounts to match that same angle (rather than making the spreader come strait out the sides). After observing some boats I saw many set up in both ways. I realized that the mast would problably have some rake to it in its final position. So with the mast raked (angled back), if I were to drop a plumbob from the spreaders base it would no longer fall at bottom of the mast, meaning that I screwed up the part I was working on.
So, just how much of a rake should my mast have? Further more, with the way I now have the part made, from the sail track to the spreader is only 35 degrees, thus meaning that my total boom travel would at best 70 degrees. Is that acceptable?
Oh, and one more thing, is tack cringle of the sail suppose to be mounted to the gooseneck?
I would have included pics, but this web site dosent seem to like pics from my computer, so if you want I could email them to you.
Thanks for any info or comments - Gorlog

[sailingdog]

gorlog-

A lot of what you are doing is dependent on the setup of the boat. While I'm not familiar with the Venture 21, the spreaders will have to be setup the same as the stock rig's mast spreaders... because the shrouds still have to go from the masthead over the spreaders to the chainplates.

It does sound like the Venture had raked spreaders, from your description of the chainplates. What you might want to do is find another venture and see how it is setup, before you do any further machine work. Either that or get photos or drawings of the standard rigging on one.

As for the tack hook, it should be on the goose neck of the boom.

As for posting photos... your best bet is to post them to flickr.com or another photo sharing website, and then point links to the photos. If you are on a Windows-based PC, get Picasa from here, and use it to organize your photos and then setup a picasa web photo album for your sailing photos.

[CapnHand]

Here's a photo of one without sails up. Sailboat "Cool Change" Photos

The spreaders are raked back, but not as much as you have yours, looks like about 120 degrees to me.

The mast rake does not look to be very much at all, it's not perfectly vertical in the photo, but the boat is down a bit in the stern. Best is like saildog wrote, find one with stock parts that you can measure and duplicate.