Technical

Read about technical aspects discovered by our members. Note some articles may appear under more than one category.

Maxi 38+ Rigging?

Published 18th August 2011 | By chris

UPDATE – Darryl has found the answer to the question below.

Download pdf file of the rig setup from Selden

Maxi Owners Association member Darrel Walters has provided the following phtographs and question. If you can help him please respond through our Forum.

38m_photo_1

I own a 1999 maxi 38+ with an in mast main furling system, it is a Selden set up, double spreaders, swept back,

When I bought the boat in 2007 and launched it in 2008 one of the things the survey brought up was to have the rigging tensioned.

When I got the yacht back from southampton to Milford haven, I had the rig tensioned by our local rigger and as such I developed a leak in the lewmar hatch aft of the mast support.

Last year I was t boned by another yacht, where his anti foul was on by coach roof, there was damage to the rigging, and as such I decided to have it all replaced. At the same time I replaced all the hatches and discovered that the tension on the mast was slightly compressing the weaker coachroof part aft of the mast step. I got a surveyor involved, and suggested reducing the rake which was quite significant. We did this but soon realised that this also reduced the angle of incident with the swept back spreaders to support the top part of the mast. So we had to put the rake back in the mast and monitor the coach roof of the mast step. I have to say that this has not increased or decreased.

The rigger says he is not prepared to put anymore rake in the mast. As it is now already 17 inches approx.

We are finding that the mast is inverting above the top spreader now when we get winds above 20 knots approx. We can reduce the inversion by reducing the head sail. But the yacht does not feel over pressed. With a full set of sails at 20 knot. As the winds increase the bend increases.

The problem I have is the lack of experts in the area to say if this bend is ok or whether there is anything I can do to reduce it. The local rigger says he has tensioned the rig to the correct percentages and any more may cause un necessary stress.

Logic would say to increase tension on the back stay but doing so would reduce tension on the primary caps and quite possibly would make the mast fall off center

Every time i think of an option, creates a new problem.

Perhaps other maxi38 owners may have had the same problem or perhaps members may know a good rigger who is familiar with my rig and perhaps would not mind offering a bit of advise.

Posted in Sails

Check your seacocks!

Published 16th August 2011 | By chris

Following recent yachting press coverage of this issue, all Maxi Owners are encouraged to have their seacocks checked.

Maxi Owners Association member Phil Ball reported the following to us via the East Coast members contact Rod Minkey

I initially wrote to Maxi in Sweden asking for details of what the seacocks were made of but with no response I involved a local boatyard. All the seacocks were replaced last week.

‘Meltemi of Lisia’ was delivered new in May 2007 – the seacocks are barely 4 years old.

I’ve attached a photograph of the heads seacock – it was removed in one piece but hand pressure snapped it in two. If you have read the YM article you’ll be aware that the CW617N marking is not what you want to see.

Posted in Hull

Fuel Tank Sender for Maxi 1000

Published 14th June 2011 | By chris

Fuel tank sender for a maxi 1000

My fuel tank sender had become increasing erratic so a replacement was required. The stainless steel tank on the Maxi 1000 has a large cut out for the tank sender used as original equipment – quite unlike the senders regularly available. After months of trying through Maxi to get in touch with the original Swedish supplier, my son Nick (works at Force 4 Lymington) came up with a simple solution from Wema. They produce a kit that fits in the hole and allows use of their regular Wema senders. Part numbers are FL-2 163010 and FLS-U 54MM 163303 for the adapter kit and then S3-E250 for the tank sender.

Thanks to Julian Trimming for this information June 2011

Posted in Ancillary Systems

Spare Keys

Published 14th June 2011 | By chris

Maxi Keys

My marina unfortunately lost my spare set of keys so I needed a replacement set. I tried Najad but the message was “we only have spares for the 1060 and the 1300 except for rudders”! The keys are unusual with a special blank but these were found from Onmar in Sweden on www.onmar.se and can be cut at a high street cobbler.

Thanks to Jullian Trimming for this information June 2011

Posted in Hull

Onboard Navigation PC

Published 19th May 2010 | By peter stonestreet

Boat PC on our Maxi 1000 – Navigation, AIS, Weather, emails and TV

I like to keep things simple on the boat as everybody can operate simple things and they tend not to fail in the wrong moment but over the years the laptop started to become a constant companion on longer trips. Initially just to be able to get a weather forcast from the Internet but later I added a NASA AIS receiver for safer Channel crossings and soon things started to get complicated. Not because of the technical solution but there was no safe place for the laptop to be kept while sailing, hence it was not much use with the AIS in more than very light winds.

The dilema I got into was that I was not prepared to spend all the money on a chart plotter and electronics charts if I would still use paper for everyday navigation and that I liked the additonal benefits a laptop/PC has over a plotter, like Internet, iTunes, DVDs for the kids etc. The solution seemed to find a home for the laptop that would be safe, the screen being viewable while the keyboard is protected – who want’s to go down in his oilies and flood the laptop.

Soon I found myself scanning the internet on Car PC options and TFT screens as I couldn’t come up with a good solution for the laptop that would not involve a separate screen and I learned that laptops are quite power hungry. I did also look at those boat PC packages that are on offer but found these too expensive and not surprisingly the components used look exactly like those on the Car PC websites.

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Posted in Ancillary Systems