Mahe 36: Original FP Mahe 36 Thread

[Edmund]

I don't know the 2010 factory price on the Bimini top, as it was included in the package offer I got. The sides are Eur 1350.

My main complaint is the missing shelter over the helm station. I've tried the Lavezzi 40, which had an OK solution over the helm.
The factory argument is that there is not enough height on the Mahe under the boom to make an equivalent solution here. I don't quite agree on that. It will of course be a compromise, but it's definitely possible.
Here on the west coast of Norway we have 2-3 meters of rain every year, and every second day is a rainy day, in average. So we are desperate for good biminis...

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Lori,
Sorry, I was off the thread for some time.
I have purchased the ecopilot last autumn. Probably I will mount it this week, it was very cold here.
The ecopilot is basically a connector with integrated electronics. I will mount it in parallel to the present connector. So that if on a trip the ecopilot electronics breaks down I can swap connectors in seconds. There is just an extra 12V wire required.
The ecopilot will reduce the current from 1.25 to 0.2 Ampere. Thi means that he average power of the Furuno autopilot system goes from 2.5 to around 1.5 ampere.

The ecopilot is much cheaper than the solar cell required to produce this 1 Ampere power. For me it's a nobrainer.
Bye,
Jef

[Cotemar]

Jef,

Please take some good pictures of how you connect your Ecopilot.
I would like to duplicate what you do when I connect and Ecopilot also.

Thanks
Mark

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Hi Edmund,
Join the club.
Some advise on commisioning the boat:
Take one full day at least, without others present.
Systematically fully inspect every part of the ship for damages and functioning. Make a good list.
Example: with our boat the furler drum probably fell on the concrete cay when the mast was mounted by FP. This produced a dent and scratch on the lower disc of the furling drum. Not a big issue?
The lower disc detached after a few months. This was all handled excellently by warranty, but it would have been nicer if we had discovered it at commisioning. It would have saved much time and worry.

The bimini is good but has one stupid problem. The mainsail sheet touches the port rear side of the bimini, causing the stitching to wear through in your first year. We have put plastic tubing on the rear, however this also causes some wear to the cloth of the bimini.
What Fountaine Pajot should do is modify the bimini. Or cheaper: to make the boom some 10 cm longer, so that the mainsail sheet does not touch.

Some recommendations what I would do:
- Ask for a 6-fold Spinlock clutch on the roof, or two 3-folds. I recommend 6 clutches: mainsail sheet and halyard, outhaul, 2 reefs plus one for the 3rd reef you will put in your sail, or your next sail. (Our insurance requires 3 reefs for world coverage, not so for European insurance). You will have to put some extra of those grey 60 blocks on the mast, but you can just buy these in a shop in La Rochelle.
Make sure that the clutches are mounted on the right position, on the non-sandwich part of the roof.
- Seal the wooden floor in the cabin with some sikaflex or whatever. This prevents salt water running under the wood. I would do this before sailing.
- I would recommend purchase of a pan holder for the stove. If you don't have this it is difficult to cook when sailing. In France this is called a serres casserolles. You might order it from Fountaine Pajot, it is mounted on the bigger ships. Or you could order it from the La Rochelle branch of Bigship. Here is the product:
Serre casseroles pour réchaud 2 feux encastrable - Eno - SC4320 - Accessoires de cuisson - BigShip Accastillage - Accessoires pour bateaux
Costs maybe 100 euro.
- If you don't want your mattrasses to become mouldy: maybe you could purchase Ikea Sultan Lillaker bed systems, 80 cm wide, for the rear beds. It's cheap. And take a saw with you to shorten the battens. Maybe Ikea is stopping the Lillaker bed system, I did not see it on the website anymore.
- You will need to buy a pressure regulator. It is difficult to find other gas bottles that fit in the gas bins. Camping gas bottles are cheaper in France.
- Purchase anchor and anchor chain of your choice. The winch takes 10 mm chain. We swapped 2 components of the anchor winch to accomodate 8 mm manganese steel chain to reduce weight (69 iso 119 kg for 50 meters)
- We took a car radio and some car speakers to La Rochelle.
- We took a 50 m shore power cable. Original is too short sometimes.
- We purchased a Handy Duck from Sweden. When you go to England / Ireland you really need this to be able to grab the moorings using your bridle. The Mahe is too high to reach low moorings.
- We puchased one round fender, I think 45 cm the biggest that fits through the front hatches. We use this on the rear, very useful.
- I recommend the FP bowsprit to be able to mount a big foresail. With or without the sail. We have the spifurl, which is really useful to get a good speed downwind. But for the cost of the spifurl you might order a simple gennaker plus a code zero maybe.

It would be nice if we could meet on the way. We will depart from the Netherlands for Norway around July 2. From Norway we will go to Scotland, then Ireland, then the Scillies islands, Bretagne, and back to the Netherlands somewhere 2nd half of October.
You could send me a private email through the forum to exchange contact details like phone number.
Kind regards
Jef

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Hi all, and Edmund,
I gave the wrong type of pan holder in my previous post. Here is the correct one:

Serre casseroles pour réchaud 3 feux encastrable - Eno - SC4330 - Accessoires de cuisson - BigShip Accastillage - Accessoires pour bateaux

Price 70 euro at Bigship.

By the way, I checked the European CE safety requirements. These actually demand some pan holder system.... It must be safe to cook when sailing.
Fountaine Pajot mounts them on their bigger ships, strangely enough not on the Mahe. Which has a CE qualification.

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Edmund,
We have a 6 HP single cylinder Suzuki 4-stroke. Supplied by Fountaine Pajot.
Rib is Valiant 270 cm. I would say 300 cm is the max.
The 6 HP will plane the rib with 2 adults with full power. (you can reduce power once you are planing). With 3 adults the RIB will not plane.
Check Cotemar's post about the factory davits. These will, if unmodified, damage the lifting ropes.

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Hi Martin, others,
Regarding a circuit diagram:
The Furuno electronics is installed by a subcontractor of Fountaine Pajot called Pochon. One of their people was aboard to commission our boat: to calibrate the electric compass of the autopilot, and to check it.
I have kindly asked him, and received, Pochon's circuit diagram that was valid at that moment, May 2008.
This is the version that:
- Has the Furuno GPS, tridata, wind instrument
- The 3-function depth / speed / temperature transducer
- Has the Furuno autopilot
- Has the Simrad AT10 Universal Convertor NMEA0183 / NMEA2000.
There are some minor errors in it. The 3 pages are attached

It is new to me that there is a Furuno server on some models, as Martin writes.

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Maybe better when rotated...

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Martin,
I am curious about your setup, since I might also switch to using the laptop as plotter. Or a combination of laptop inside and plotter at the helm.
Which PC navigation SW do you use? Which maps?
Do you get a radar overlay, or do you consider this unimportant? (and AIS more important?). How do you get currents and tides?

I use a garmin 276C very small plotter. It is connected to the NMEA0183 bus through a double-contact switch. This switch switches between the Furuno GPS32 and the garmin 276C as input for the autopilot and the Furuno instruments.
Maps and waypoints are uploaded to the 276C from the laptop using Mapsource SW. You need a trick to get your present position in the laptop (make a MOB waypoint in the Garmin and transfer this from the Garmin to Mapsource in the PC)

When I really need the plotter outside, e.g. anchoring, I decouple the battery-powered 276C, take it outside, and switch NMEA to the Furuno GPS32.

Kind regards
Jef

[Cotemar]

Mahe's,

Here are some Great Cruise planning tools.

Marine GeoGarage, the nautical maps web portal
http://marine.geogarage.com/routes

Pick your Map Content in the right top corner.
As you zoom in the marine maps get a higher resolution. Put in your waypoints & routes

Today NOAA (US), Linz (NZ) and DHN (Brazil) have decided to release freely their nautical maps which can be downloadable on their websites.
So the Marine GeoGarage displays them publicly, the cost for their web hosting being paid by online advertisment..
Some layers (UKHO) (UK) are only accessible via some monthly recurring subscription used to pay royalties to some Hydrographic Services.
This is one of the features of the Premium subscription, which is a month to month service with no annual contract.

ActiveCaptain
www.activecaptain.com
Click on The Interactive Cruising Guidebook
Zoom in on the NOAA Charts for more detail
When you see the colored # tags, just click on them to find great anchorages and how others rated them.

Mark

[Cotemar]

Mahe’s

I painted the props with PropSpeed and wanted to give everyone the details in case you would like to do this. One application will last 2 years.
You can purchase the small kit at Westmarine which is more than enough to do 2 boats or 4 props.

PropSpeed 200ml (.26qt.) Kit, WM Model# 7844350, MFG Part# PS-0200-K, $199.99 USD

www.propspeedusa.com

PropSpeed is a new performance coating for propellers
Unlike conventional antifouling paint which does not adhere well to underwater metal, or when it does, reduces performance, this unique, environmentally-friendly, two-part coating system bonds to your boat’s propeller and running gear with no recoating needed for a year or more. Its “foul release” formulation reduces drag by preventing marine growth from attaching, resulting in fuel savings, and improved top end speed and performance. Easily applied by an experienced applicator, well versed “do-it-yourselfers” can also apply this coating by following the included application guide.

Make sure you use loctite threadlocker on all your threads before installing your bolts.
Bend up the stainless steel locking tabs
Each blade is numbered 1,2 & 3. Make sure that you insert Blade #1 in Slot #1 and so on.
Apply plenty of grease to the gears before you insert them in their numbered slot

Mark

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Last week I have installed the Ecopilot power-saving device for the Lecomble et Schmitt hydraulic cylinder. See some previous posts by Cotemar and me.
I installed it as follows:
- The device is a replacement-plug for the standard plug on the hydraulic cylinder, see picture. The new plug has electronics inside.
- I installed the new plug with it's own cable connected to the autopilot in parallel to the standard plug. This way, if the new device breaks down, you can swap back fast.
- I purchased 2.5 metres of household 3-lead 3*0.75 mm2 cable. With european colors blue for + lead, brown for - lead, yellow/green for ground.
- This is connected to the device which is basically a PCB inside a connector with very litlle space to spare. It is a nice water-tight construction. There is little space in the plug so pay attention to the length of the leads, see picture.
- I pulled the new cable through the big grey hose holding multiple cables.
- On the autopilot side, the cable is connected in parallel to the standard cable: (see the Furuno autopilot installation manual, the fold-out on the last page)
-- Blue lead, Bypass/Clutch +, is connected to connector TB3 pin 1, B/C_Power.
--Brown lead, Bypass/Clutch -, is conected to connector TB3 pin 2, B/C.
-- Yellow/Green lead, Gnd, is connected to connector TB3 pin 3, Shield.
- I put the original plug in a zip-lock bag to prevent loss of the rubber seal and bolt. And tied it up with a tie-wrap.

Note:
- See the paper coming with the new plug.
- Remove the main fuse of the autopilot before starting work on this.
- The polarity of the original clutch may be reverse, you can swap this. Do not swap the polarity of the new plug.
- Work neatly on the autopilot side. The wires are very close together on plug TB3. If you have some stray wires making contact between the connections, you will damage a relay in the autopilot. Especially between pins 1 and 2.
- The Gnd wire is not essential. It will give some reduction of RF interference. It would be nice to use a 2-lead wire with shield instead. However this causes more risk of short-circuit on the plug side by stray wires.
- Power reduction is around 1.25 Amps. I confirmed this using our Nasa battery monitor.

Jef

[DotDun]

Originally Posted by Jef & Marin, Netherlands

- I purchased 2.5 metres of household 3-lead 3*0.75 mm2 cable. With european colors blue for + lead, brown for - lead, yellow/green for ground.

Jef,

FWIW, the color code you quoted is backwards. Brown should be + and blue should be -. Obviously, it's all copper in the middle so it works! :^)

[MKB53]

Hi Jeff

Sorry about the delay but I am travelling at the moment and not online very much.

I use SOB (Software on Board) - I did not research nav software much and this decision was pretty much because I could get a trial system free and the fully functional SW was very inexpensive (A$60). I figured I could get to know the issues of using nav SW at low cost and then upgrade to something better if I felt I needed more. I would then be able to evaluate the available SW with some experience behind me.

So far the SOB has been pretty good. It has met my needs and proved reliable.

SOB have been bought by another company so I suspect the prices may have changed!

SOB use C-Map charts and I have been using the "All Australia" card in a CMap reader connected to the Laptop via USB. The charts are pretty good but have a few annoying attributes. I have MapSource as well (handheld GPS) and sometimes refer to those for missing attributes.

I have not got radar but the SW does support it. I felt the AIS was more important for the conditons and usage I have in the near term.

The SW is capable of uploading waypoints and course details to the Autopilot/GPS and also issuing commands directly to the Autopilot if it (SOB) is in charge (Navigating). I tried this via the serail connection but do not have it set up correctly at the moment.

Both sets of electronic charts have tide and current info and this is displayed on SOB on the Laptop. I also down load GRIB files and upload these to SOB to assist in route planning.

I can answer any specific questions but won't have access to photos or configurations till I get home late March.

Cheers
Martin

[MKB53]

Jeff

A few more things:
The SOB SW is designed for Touch screen use. It can be used with a mouse pointer. I use the pointer but I think it would be a lot easier with touch screen.

I do not yet have a display at the helm. When manoevering in the dark the Admiral sits at the helm and shouts instructions. I would love to get a waterproof touch screen for the helm and attach that to the Laptop.

My AIS has a GPS as it is a transponder not just a receiver. I have filtered out the signal from this but it could be used by the Laptop should the Furuno GPS break.

One of the limitations in teh configuration is the capability of the Furuno "Server". It is more of a hub/repeater than a server and can only repeat a limited number of NMEA messages so you need to decide which you need and configure accordingly. Another reason that I interfaced the AIS via the Brookhouse Multiplexer rather than via the server.

I will get down to producing a circuit diagram, perhaps over a beer on holiday!

Cheers
Martin