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So I had my boat detailed due to excessive oxidation and I now realize that they ended up pulling about 3-4 feet of the coax line through the base of the mast. I am unsure if I should just try to run an electricians tape down it and hope I snag it? Any suggestions are appreciated. It should be noted that the boat is in a slip so if I can avoid removing the mast it would be appreciated.

I'm unclear on what happened. If it's coax, it will have a soldered termination on each end. How did the termination get through the hole?

I put my mast up/down in the slip all the time. Why not just put it down, roll it forward to the pulpit, and remove the base plate? Then you have easy access to the interior. You don't even have do disconnect anything, other than maybe laying the boom with main sail on it onto the deck temporarily.

But I'm probably missing something here.

the coax for the Vhf runs from the top of the mast to the base and the coax exits the base of the mast through a hole like the mast head lights. The issue became that apparently they removed the mast and someone grabbed the base coax line and pulled it down internally inside the mast for what I assume was 3 -4 feet so I have no way of accessing the end that needs to connect the mast head antenna base and was hoping on suggestions to recover the end that goes up top.

I'm also confused.

Isn't there a connector on the end of the coax? That connector should prevent the coax from pulling into the mast.

Are you saying the TOP of the mast? Shouldn't there be a connector up there to keep it from pulling inside? Is it still connected to the antenna on top?

Either way, it sounds like you need to drop the mast and look inside. Or maybe not. Maybe they just pulled slack out of it.

Did they remove the mast or did they use a rotarty buffer on the deck and get too close to the cable exiting the mast? BTDT!

Regardless of how it happened, it sounds to me that you'll need to lower the mast, pull out the old coaxial cable, and either re run it, if it's still in usable condition, or install a new one. Not that expensive, and not that hard to do. It gives you a good excuse to install sound dampening on the cable, if not already done. By attaching zip ties to the coax cable every foot or two, before fishing the cable back into the mast, you'll eliminate that annoying slapping sound inside the cabin, which an undampened cable will make when the boat rocks and sways. An electrician's fish tape is probably the easiest way to fish the cable, either new or old, back into the mast.

I will attempt to pull the coax line out via fish tape just to get through the season. Then I will replace it.

I've had luck with this kind of situation before by making a lasso from a length of aluminum or steel tube and a small rope. Slide an electrician's fish tape through the tube and hook the middle of the rope onto it. Pull the rope back through the tube until you have a small loop sticking out. Now you have a lasso you can slide down inside the mast and try to snag the end of the cable with.