Thanks Dave. There will be no access once the mast is stepped because the connection will be inside the mast. What I have now is a short pigtail at the deck inside the mast plate and another length that I've left inside the base of the mast. The connection from the factory was a poorly done splice that worked fine for 26 years. Maybe I was just lucky. I could certainly put a connector in there but my thinking is that a splice is lower loss than connectors since it's essentially one connection rather than three (wire to connector/connector to connector/ connector to wire.) No?