Measuring your boat for new sails is a job for the sailmaker, so when our PBO Project Boat Maximus needed new sails, we called in sailmaker Daryl Morgan, technical manager…

sailing safety gear - children wearing lifejackets

Ali Wood discusses the sailing safety gear she chose for their first family cruise on board their Maxi 84, and how it performed

The marine alternator had to be removed so the problem could be found

Ali Wood gets to grips with Maximus’s faulty electrical system after some unexpected failures made an appearance on passage

A boat sailing in Poole Harbour

Why has the Maxi 84 proved so popular since her launch 45 years ago? David Harding sailed Maximus, the ‘work in progress’ refurbished PBO Project Boat, to find out

Choosing a marine toilet isn’t as straightforward as you think – and after looking at the options it may be that refurbishment rather than replacement could be the answer. With…

The Volvo Penta engine on our Maxi 84 Maximus is a re-badged version of the Perkins 103-06, itself originally imported from a Japanese company called Ishikawajima Shibaura Machinery. Perkins marketed…

With an inter-cooled engine, the role of the seawater is to take away the heat from the freshwater. The seawater, or ‘raw water’, is a separate flow to the fresh…

With Maximus, our PBO Project boat ready for her shakedown voyage from Chichester to Poole, I turned my attention to passage planning. I dug out my old logbook and realised…

The day was approaching for Maximus’s shakedown cruise, a two-day voyage from Chichester to her new home at Cobbs Quay Marina, Poole. Before then, however, we needed to understand our…