Hooper Point No Point 2011 - Blasted by the Reacher!

Here's a link to the track: http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/HooperNoPoint2011.htm

Was a wild ride, hitting 10kts over and over again this time out! The wind was from the West approaching 30kts.....and pretty painful for a small boat like Akoni at times! Downwind to Hooper was a hoot and I think we held our own...showed 10.4kts of the speedo a few times but most of the time we were averaging above 8. Looked like a couple of the bigger boats had issues and turned back after rounding Hooper...AmericanFlyer, Cheetah, and maybe another. Upwind to NoPoint was a little much for Akoni...pretty much crawled there in survival mode, but at least the waves were big enough for us to sail around and we did pass Elan. Age of Reason, Audrey, and I think Toby were not far ahead, with Pursuit and Valiant pretty far ahead. The reach back home was not so good to us, thought it would be a screamer, but ended up being too far forward for us to get into hyperspeed and could not reel in anyone ahead (which I think was everyone but Elan). The beat into the river was amazing...I don't think I've ever been in that much breeze going upwind. Audrey was in their element and appeared to give the 'blast reacher' a workout between NoPoint and Cedar Point and finished quite a ways in front of us (ok, they blew our doors off by 10 minutes). I havn't a clue where Lickety Split was in all this, but they came into it #1 in the SMSA middle distance series with 4 points, Age Of Reason 2nd with 6, and Toby 3rd with 6. Coming in, we were 4th with 9 points. I don't think we made any ground on the leading boats in this series.

Eastport to Solomons 2011

Was a nice day on the water Friday, with a building southerly. By the time the race started, we had 8-10kts from the SSW. The wind pretty much stayed that way all night, making for an upwind pointing match all the way down the bay. Moon was full and the weather perfect. Started off with favorable current so we worked our way across the bay to the deeper water over by Bloody Point. After looking at the GPS track, it appeared to be a good move because our tack angles were less than 90 degrees until the current swapped. After 1PM when the current went foul, the strategy was to hide in the shallows of the eastern shore. That we did....problem is that it was very lonely out there. Seems most people stayed a bit more west. Once we were there we were pretty much committed. One excpetion was Audry, a well sailed Merit 25. We traded tacks with them all night right up until the finish. Both of us rode the long westward leg from R76 back up the Patuxent on port tack bringing us to the cliffs over by Cove Point. Noticing the traffic jam of boats clogged up in the current near PR3 we opten to stay away from there. Local knowledge paid off huge on the final beat to the finish. While Audry tacked back into the Patuxent (flowing outward), we decided to hide behind the fish traps along the shore where there is favorable current and a lifting shore breeze. We gained 5 minutes on them in the last few miles of the race and beat them across the finish line. All in all, staying east was good...as most of the winning boats in their classes stayed east. Also, boats we knew that stayed west did not do as well.
GPS track is here: http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/AkoniEastportSolomons2011.htm
Results are here: http://race.eastportyc.org/_/eyc/uploads/results/31st_Annual_Solomons_Island_Invitational-2011/31st_Annual_Solomons_Island_Invitational-2011_race1.html

Prep Time

Getting ready for Eastport and Screwpile! Been doing pretty well this year, but the competition is tough...we'll need to bring our best game. :)

Little Choptank and other tracks

It's been a while since I posted on the Blog and we're not sailing as much as we were last year due to work schedules. We did the SMSA Little Choptank race Saturday. It's a 33 mile race from The mouth of the Patuxent River, north to the Choptank River and back. 7 boats raced, 3 boats finished. It was an ugly 14 hour ordeal. VMG around the course was 2.62kts for us. After the start, we tried to hide from the current below Cove Point by sailing in the shallows and playing a big eddy there. We came so close to shore we had to tack away because of the swimming area. This paid off big and we came out on top of the fleet around the point. After that it was a drifty ordeal, mostly upwind. After dark (and long after we were supposed to finish) some of the boats that were behind us dropped out. Also in the evening we had to deal with quite a bit of ship trafic. Maneuvering and planning to be out of the way was difficult in the ghosting breeze and haze. We were slow boat in the fleet and 1st to finish!! A good day for Akoni even if it was a bad day of sailing. Here is the track from the race:
http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/LittleChoptank2011.htm

Last month was the Sharps Island race. Not very eventful and caught by a dying breeze we finished 8 out of 10. In our fleet, we were 2nd out of 4. Here is our track from that:
http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/AkoniSharps2011.htm