Frostbite #3 - End of Season for Akoni

Painful day on the water. I thought we were doing ok until Easy-Button decided to take us up. It’s not often that we overtake them to windward, so we were pleased to tangle with them…..but that got us too high on the course and the lower boats sped up to the mark as we crept down to it. The rest was history…dying breeze from behind. What’s a short stick heavy to do. Boats pretty much finished by SA/D. Akoni gets hauled out tomorrow, so this is our last race of a remarkably good season. Thanks to everyone that came out to sail with Akoni this year!
Spring Frostbites: 5th of 13
Sharps Island (38.9nm): 1st of 6
Double Handed (12nm): 1st of 8
Spring Invite (10.2nm): 4th of 5
Little Choptank (32.5nm): 2nd of 6
Summer Invite: 3rd of 6
Stars and Stripes: 3rd of 4
Screwpile: 8th of 15
GovCup (70nm): 3rd of 19
Patuxent River Regatta: 2nd of 5
Smith Point (59nm): 1st of 2 (against Pursuit)
Fall Series: 3rd of 5
Hooper: 4th of 4
Fall Invite: 6th of 10
Wednesdays: 6th of 14
Wednesdays PRO: 7th of 14
Middle Distance Series: 2nd of 8
Invitational Series: 2nd of 13
Club Hight Point? We'll see at the banquet, but I think we're in the running with Little Latitudes. :)

Akoni Hooper-No-Point 2010

Zoiks, I thought Smith Point was exciting. The winds were well into the 20's from the NW at the start. We entered in the spinnaker class along with Cheetah and Pursuit. Only Pursuit put up a chute. We were hitting 10's often on the long downwind leg to Hooper with double headsails. Most of the way to Hooper, we set another speed record for the boat, hitting a crazy 12.1kts....twice! Then promptly had an epic crash that put water up over the cockpit seat lazarette. Good thing it was latched and I'm glad we were not in a J-24 or we would have sank. We put the 2nd headsail away (#1)...took almost 6 minutes to wrangle in the mess. That is the wiggle on the track plot. After rounding Hooper, we needed to put in a reef, which Steve put in pretty quickly. It was funny when he said...that's it? Most of the way we were reaching to No-Point with the main resting on the spreaders...for a time I though the spreader might break. With the bigger broadside waves, the main would touch the water. We tried to trim it back, but the boat would spin out if we sheeted any harder. At No-Point we turned back and it was LUMPY! So wet, so bumpy, the water kept coming in and we got quite a bit of water downstairs. We could see the boats ahead...but just too far to catch the spin fleet. We did keep up with most of the boats in our rating range, finishing right with Shermax and ahead of Walkabout.
Thank you to Steve and Charles for putting up with this one. :)

Here is a link to our track:
http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/AkoniHooper2010.htm
Next weekend is the Fall Invite...who's in?

crazy, just crazy!

Akoni 2010 Photo Video

Smith Point 2010

This year was similar to last, a slow ride down the bay to Smith with a fill from the south late. Although it took almost 9 hours to get downwind to Smith Point, when the wind filled in, it came in from the south giving us a spectacular 2nd downwind run. It took us less than 5 hrs to get back. Sailflow predicted this shift almost perfectly. After 8PM the wind filled in huge, much bigger than we expected. By 9 We were holding 7kts steady with surfing in the mid 8's and 5 foot waves. We were near dead down wind and it was very difficult to steer, with the boom and pole taking turns nearly kissing the water. At around 10:30 we broke our speed record for the boat, hitting 11.4kts!! We then got caught between breaking waves and had an epic wipeout...I thought we were going to destroy the chute with all the shreddy flogging. It took a bit to clean up, but we were still moving 6-7kts under main alone. We popped the 155 and continued up to Cedar Point. At cedar Point, we jibed over to port tack and rode the fastest reach on this boat I've ever experienced..breaking our speed record for a second time that night with an 11.7kt surf which lasted for almost half a minute. It was a great ride back and one that will be hard to top. Preliminary results have us winning this race which puts us in great position for SMSA season highpoint award and the middle distance series.

http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/AkoniSmithPoint2010.htm

GovCup 2010

We had a great race down the bay this year. Winds were from the north at the start in the mid teens, making for a nice spinnaker run down the bay. We chose to go left at the start with a port pole to head towards the rhumb line and out into the current. There were some anchored ships out there so we ended up extending a bit further than we wanted to stay out of the wind shadow. It all worked out and we extended out on the fleet and held 5th at that time. We were chasing Cookie, RumRation, Scrimshaw, and Acetea. The fleet was close behind and we knew that we needed to stay west, out of the foul current around the Choptank. Fortunately, most of the fleet stayed on the rhumb and got set by the current. It was not until the targets that we finally passed RumRation and got within correcting distance of Scrimshaw. In the light air we did a 'crazy ivan', heating our course up to the extreme for a while and then jibing back...we came out great with that one. The chute finally came down at Point Lookout and the 2nd part of the race started..upwind. We carried the #1 past the junction buoy to the shore, then bumped the shore on each tack up the river. At the finish, we almost ran aground in an all out effort to keep up with Scrimshaw...who was very fast upwind as well! We're pleased with our 3rd place finish this year!
Resuts: http://www.smcm.edu/govcup/raceinfo10/results.html
and our track: http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/AkoniGovCup2010.htm

Stars and Stripes Race 2010

Well, 3 out of 4 is not all that bad. It was a nice day on the water after the wind filled in.

View Larger Map

Little Choptank Race 2010 - update

Wow, looks like our tactics on the course payed off. We took 2nd place, just 18 seconds ahead of Foxtrot Corpin, a Beneteau 36.7.

http://smsa.com/Race/2010/Results/LittleChoptank.htm

Little Choptank Race 2010

Akoni had a great race up the Bay today. Wind was in the mid teens and we just surfed along around 8kts. Not sure how we did...guess we'll have to wait for results. Here is the track from our race:
http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/LittleChoptank2010.htm


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GBFR?

Ok, this is cool. Found some people on SailNet that sail 5mi triangles all over the world and compare results...sounded fun and cool.....so we set one up in the Patuxent. Game on!

http://www.bfsshop.com/BFSGR/00_gr_rules_01.html
http://www.sailnet.com/forums/racing/61800-global-big-freakin-regatta-possible.html

http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/BFRPatuxent.htm


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Port...Port!

Did someone say PORT? We had a great start Wednesday for race #4. Not often we get to port tack the whole fleet and have it actually work. Thanks to David Meiser for the photos:

SMSA Spring Invite 2010

Awesome day out on the water. RC set a 10.5 mile course across the bay and back. Winds were forecast to be from the west at 22kts. The winds dropped just before the start as the front passed overhead...we shook the reef and had a downwind spinnaker start with winds around 12kts. We held our own against mostly 'A' fleet boats until the wind died on the far side of the bay. It's a pain to be the small boat in a dying breeze. After bobbing around for about 20 minutes, the wind filled back in from the NW...building steadily. We did a sail change to the 108 jib at he second tack. We finished in 20kts of breeze. Additional races for the day were abandoned when the winds built from the west to nearly 35 sustained. Glad we have a storm jib! It was a lumpy ride back home. Here is our track and a photo from last Wednesday:
http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/SMSASpringInvite2010.htm

Sharps Island 2010

Downwind to the lighthouse was very slow after our 10:10AM start...and pretty much the whole fleet converged on Sharps at the same time around 4PM. It was discouraging to have the non-spin fleet catch all the way up to the spinnaker fleet. Back upwind, the breeze built throughout the late day and evening...eventually we were running a #3 and there were pretty big waves and white caps at the gas dock. We worked past Valiant, and stayed close to Status Quo (an Olson 30) and Cheetah (a NY 36). Little Lattitudes and Pursuit were visible to us when they finished..but too far to get an approximate time. Great Ride! We played the shallow waters, lifts, and currents in this one...here is our track:
http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/SharpsIslandRace2010.htm

Fast Frostbite

Had a good race today...5th against some fast boats (missed 4th by 3 secs and 3rd by 30)....should have let my soda spill! Doh. Wind was in the mid 20's..had the reef in and the jib with 5 crew. Track is here: http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/3-28-10Frostbite4.htm

Bottom Done

Just a couple pics from Saturday before I splashed showing the completed through hulls for depth and speed, plus the motor and paint. :)

Backstay progress

It was nice out today and made it up the mast with a bag of tools, drill, extension cord, etc. and got the flicker installed. It took longer than I thought because there was less real estate up there than I planned. I'm glad I made a special nut holding/reacher tool to get the nuts inside the mast head...it would have been impossible without it. :) I still need to work on line lengths in the lower sections, but for now it's functional. A good thing too, Frostbite #1 is tomorrow!!

Backstay Additions

I finally got around to mounting the hardware for my cascading backstay. Plans are for a 16:1 unit similar to that found on the S-2 7.9. There is a nice flat spot on the back corners where I mounted a cam cleat and turning block leading to a cluster near the backstay chainplate.

Faired the transducers and ran some wire

Spent some time this weekend fairing the transducers and running the wires for them:

Flush Mount Through Hulls

Akoni is out of the water for the year and one of the projects I had lined up was to install a new ST-40 system from Raymarine for speed and depth. The old depth unit was barely working, so it's time for a new one. After looking at the bottom of a couple of the other racers in the yard, I decided that flush mounting the transducers and fairing them in would make sense. We had a warm weekend so I decided to get started and drill some holes. The job was easier than I thought, so I got pretty far.

Here is akoni after the haul out:




Here are interior and exterior shots after I removed the old transducer and cleaned out the existing 2" hole. I traced a circle around the new transducer flange so I knew what to remove in the next step:



What I did to recess the transducer was to use a router set at the thickness of the flange to remove the hull material around the hole up to the circle I traced. I also added a second hole for the other transducer:



I mounted the depth transducer ahead of the speed paddlewheel to prevent turbulance from potentially interfering with the depth sounder. I ran out of time and needed to let the 3M 4200 sealant dry before fairing everything over. I do that next week if the weather is good: