"I think I can set up the rig in such a way that it should be fairly easy to get sailing without too much fuss..."
Gary, I believe you can do it. if you could leave the sail on the mast, with sheets and lower control lines permanently deployed, there is not much left that needs to be dismantled. My biggest problem as I am getting older is raising and lowering the mast on my aft-facing tabernacle which is actually pretty good as it's keel-stepped, and I can unclip and stow the running rigging inside the sail catcher and keep everything together pretty well. But next time (if there is a next time) I think there is a better way.
If you can keep the weight of the mast light enough so you can lift it up bodily and drop it into a keel-stepped stump tube with ID a loose clearance fit to the base of the mast (the simplest of all tabernacles) - long enough that it goes up through the cabin top and short enough so it can remain standing when towing home, then you are almost in the category of a moored boat for speed of deployment. The sails and running rigging, parrels etc just need to be dropped down over the stump tube at the end of an outing, left tidy and covered securely on a suitable temporary gallows. Then an almost clean mast can be lifted out and stowed alongside on the same gallows. You might need only to detach the lifts (set up with snap shackles at the boom) to do this.
If I do it again on a trailer boat I will pay whatever it costs for a carbon mast I can handle in that way - and save money elsewhere. With a Hartley 16 I think you might just get away with it if its a light-weight mast. Potentially the rig could be as quick to deploy or quicker than anything else on the ramp. Raise the mast, uncover the bundle, clip the lifts onto the boom, take the slack out of the halyard and other control lines, hoist sail, stow the foldable gallows and away you go. For the cost of a carbon mast (gulp) you would more than double the frequency of feeling like going for a sail at a moment's notice, and that's real economy. (For a smaller boat I'd look at a bamboo mast, but a Hartley 16 might be a bit too stiff for that, unless you have access to some really good giant bamboo, in which case it could be well worth a try - what's to fear in a dismasting if you have a couple of spare masts up your sleeve?) But a carbon mast would earn its keep, I reckon. That's ultimately what I would aim for. If I ever get another chance.
Alex, those Farr6000s are highly sought after here in NZ these days. 5000s too. At "Swallowdale" up the Uretara River at Katikati there's a little fleet of them.
![](/resources/photo/uTljNHN_T9II2VPclRSi4QUrBh1UIyeWoKfO8UqN9V7UBNICn1tjaMMo9qChTvk01p-CnU-xH1b5G2HXe045dA2/preview)
Here.
The odd one out in the clip is a Noelex - the real "sports car" of trailer boats, but nowhere near as commodious as Farr6000.
Coincidentally to this post, the towed boat at the end of the video clip is a Paradox with a mast which can be lifted in and out of a tube tabernacle as explained above, sail and all (its a sprit sail). This mast is wood though, and a bit heavy. The owner is young and steps it effortlessly, I couldn't do it these days. But that's partly where the static tube tabernacle idea came from. Arne thought out the same idea too - there's a thread about it somewhere.