Fitting a Cutter Stay to a Wooden Mast

[Hampus]

Hey!

When I repaired the foot of the mast last year, I noticed that the mast is almost solid from the deck and seven feet up (wooden mast). Same thing from three feet below the spreaders to three feet above. Same for top of mast. In short, wherever there are fittings ot stuff screwed into the mast, there's a reinforcement.

We're about to mount a cutter stay, if possible, but it proved difficult in many ways. To maintain proper sail overlap and a good geometry of the foresails we need to mount the cutter stay just above the stem and about 8 feet from the top of the mast. A place that has no reinforcements. We also need to fit running backstays at the same point, or the mast will most likely end up being shorter than intended :/

The way I figure it should be done, we'll have a custom made three sided fitting for the mast. We'll fix the cutter stay at the front end of the fitting and the two running backstays at the sides and leave the aft section open for the mainsail track. The fitting will have to be screwed into the mast using stainless wooden screws. The question is if they'll hold without the reinforcements? I guess the walls of the mast are about an inch thick.

How does that sound? Will the mast be able to take the load even without the reinforcements? Or should we just abandon the project?

/Hampus