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What is your recommendation for the Spreaders on trip of less then 5 miles? One one hand, they bump against the cabin when traveling down the road. On the other hand, it is one more thing to have to attach when your ready to raise the mast.
Anyone have a "trick" of what to do with them?

I have two 12-inch lengths of foam pipe insolation that I put around the spreaders and hold in place with tie-wraps.

Paul

I use a safety pin to hold my spreaders in place, l remove one pin when the mast is down and turn the mast so the remaining spreader is over the safety wire. Extremely fast to do, safer than dancing over the mast, safer than disconnecting the safety wires. The whole operation, including walking down the deck is less than thirty seconds. any style of quarter inch pin will work great, I use one of these:

I put keypin shackles at the aft end of each forward lifeline. Takes a second or two to release each side. Once the lines are slacked the mast can be set into place above the lifelines, no dance needed, nothing loose to worry about (I'd worry about the strain on the tips if I was removing the spreader from the mast all the time). This is a simple quick solution that doesn't add extra setup steps.

My X spreaders have about 4" clearance from the cabin and do not touch it when the mast is in the stored position even bouncing down the road.

Torque is your enemy when handling the mast - especially if you have a furled genny on the CDI like me. I learned a good trick from Chip H on this board - if you do the spreader dance at the spreaders the mast torque is a cinch to handle - a real DOH! in retrospect, but that kind of trick saves a lot of rigging/de-rigging time.

I run a bungee from the lifelines,under the spreader and back up over the lifelines,leaving plenty of slack,but not enough for the spreader to hit the cabin. I plan to also add a center mast support very soon,and that should help as well.

There are many previous threads on similar topics, either the Spreaders or Lifelines.
Just a few examples ... enjoy:

Speeding up rigging and derigging ..
Quick release lifelines
PROBLEM WITH SPREADERS

If this was a poll, then I vote for David Mellon's response. The pin shown above is great and easy for me each time I drop the mast before I move it forward. The way to go, IMHO.