A friend of mine who retired recently has written his first Sci-Fi book,

SWORLD: The Chronicles of Whyman

It's a very cool book about an interplanetary space voyager who gets diverted to a beautiful and strange world where he and his crew get drawn into a quest.  There is science behind the science and the descriptions were real enough to keep me engaged.  I thoroughly enjoyed this one.  I hope to read many more works from W.R. Harris.  :)

http://www.amazon.com/SWORLD-Chronicles-W-R-Harris-ebook/dp/B00KQPP9C8

Sailing fast on a Mumm 36

Was out racing on the Chesapeake Bay last week on a friends Mumm 36 (Cheetah).  Wind was up and blowing from the north, which made for an excellent 20 mile downhill ride.  This Mumm has been modified with a big wheel and an asym with a giant sprit.  Was super fun to sail in these conditions.  We were doing 12-14kts most of the time.  Here I am at the helm:

Hat Trick

Button Chase

Wednesday, 18 July 2012, a large storm cell came through the race course. The breeze came up quickly and made for some fun racing.

Maintenance and Upgrades

It's been a while since I've posted.  Last week I did some needed maintenance on Akoni and changed the starboard clutch unit.  The original was a Spinlock double that came with the boat.  I swapped it out with a new Spinlock unit purchased from Annapolis Performance Sailing (APS).  Easy peasy!  Also added a winch handle pocket for the pit, just inside the companionway stairs. 

Melissa's Book - The Three Stones of Asche

My daughter Melissa Kriz just got her 1st book finally published.  It's available now online from Amazon: The Three Stones of Asche

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.