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

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