Technical
Read about technical aspects discovered by our members. Note some articles may appear under more than one category.
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
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
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
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.
Espar Ltd., Eastern Hangar,Shaw Way,Mount Batten,Plymouth,Devon.PL9 9XH.
Tel:- 01752 491900 Fax:- 01752 491910
Espar Ltd.,Harleyford Marina,Harleyford,Marlow,Bucks.SL7 2DX.
Tel:- 01628 471368 Fax:- 01628 474819