[en] We study the continuum limit of the abelian string tension and the density of abelian monopoles calculated after carefully fixing the maximal abelian gauge by employing the simulated annealing algorithm. We present the evidence that the abelian string tension converges to the nonabelian one in the continuum limit. For the monopole density we confirm earlier findings that the density of the properly defined infrared monopoles has correct scaling while the total density seems divergent in the continuum limit due to ultraviolate contributions. We also compare with results obtained with the usual iterative gauge fixing algorithm