Stepped up.

The step is sorted. Trimmed it to size, dremel'ed a bolt head sized recess in the cabin top, and traced out a circle of tape to keep this area from getting further coated or painted- I imagine that tape circle is going to get re-applied a few times before all is done. The step itself won't get glued down until after paint, and I'll gloss it up and keep its carbon look.

And my sleeve could be better, so I'm trying plan B. The old one was too many layers and too thick, and I used too many layers of plastic between the laminate and the mast wall. I suppose I was a little timid about getting the thing stuck inside and ruining the mast. Put all that together, and the sleeve's ID was just too small to get the stuff inside that I wanted to fit.

So now just one layer of packing tape stuck inside the mast, a single layer of mylar with a small overlap, a layer of peel ply, the laminate- about 3 layers of biax, peel ply, absorber, a wrap of bag film (it's stretchy, and prevents epoxy adhesion to the latex), and then the bladder. So far it's holding nicely at 40psi, with a warming lamp under to keep things cooking. Once again, I'll see in the morning how it looks.

Also have the compression post propped up inside the boat, with the top and bottom flanges tack-welded in place. The post has had the wedge-sleeve glued in, I've bored the pivot holes and tuned up the fit of the moving parts, and it all seems good so far.

Once the tack welds set, I'll give it the full fillet and tape treatment, but it'll be easier to get clean results on the bench, than inside the boat.