2007 SMSA Frostbite #1

Beautiful weather and a northerly breeze made for a quick trip up to the bridge and back. Course was KMZ. Route is here: http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/07Frostbite1.htm

Hooper - Point no Point Race

Yesterday was the SMSA Hooper Isalnd Light - Point no Point Light race. It was a beautiful day with high clouds, cool breeze, and flat water. Only problem is that the race was downwind for a three legs of the 30 mile triangle!! A day of no-hiking racing (more like cruising) was a relaxing change of pace to what has been an otherwise windy season. I've posted an interactive google map plot of our course here: http://www.tqci.net/~jkriz/hoopernopoint07.htm

We should have a couple nice photos posted soon!

GovCup 2007

Wow, what a slog upwind!! Winds were 24-27 from 180, 2-6' waves with caps. Lightening after 2AM with a big shift west. Uphill all the way to St. Mary's. Reef and a #3, shifting to #1 after 2AM. Emergency avoidance / near miss on a beefy fishtrap in 25' water, 10 loud horns - 3 ship crossings, blown front bulkhead, head rolled a 3 and opened up, two bent stanchions, and Steve barfed. Planned for and made the shift on the correct side of the course. Crossed in front of Hendonism at Pt. No point. Could not catch Kestrel. In at 09:54, 6th place. Big boats did great, lighter boats slow in the waves. 1 Multihull dismasting, 77 DNF! I looked back at the results and in classes Multi, B, CD and N, only 18 boats finished out of 90. In A-0, A-1, A-2 and A-3, 55 out of 60 boats finished. I guess the A classes have better prepared boats for this stuff!

Click on the map for a Google Map View of our course.

http://www.smcm.edu/govcup/documents/prelim_results_2007_govcup.htm

All had a great time!!

Slowwww

Great weekend of racing!! Sharps was about as long as they come, we raced up the bay upwind at a whopping 2kts against the current making a mere .8kts VMG most of the way...we got to the Sharps Light around 6:30PM only to have the wind shift around for another slow upwind leg. Fortunately, the current was in our favor on the way back. We finished the 38 miles on Sunday at 12:40AM. No clue how we did with respect to the other boats that stuck it out and finished. At least 4 of our competitors dropped out about the time we threw the anchor out to stop from drifting backwards! Sunday was a better day for sailing, winds from the south at 10-15...ended up doing two races back to back. Fun!

Low Tide From Noreaster

With everyone talking about flooding, this was the last thing I thought I would need to worry about:

SPLASH!

Sorry, now big yellow keel this year. I ran out of Yellow Vivid on the rudder, and at $75 a quart, I decided to just use the discounted Blue Vivid I had on the keel. Well, the weather finally got nice enough to splash the boat. Bottom was finished last week and waiting for a break in the wind to get the boat back on the rig. Everything went smoothly. 1st impressions under motor are that there is reduced vibration / turbulance at top speed (now 6.7kts vs the 6.4 previously). Sails will go up on the 18th for our opening day frostbites!

Fairing and Paint

It's been very cold over the past couple weeks...15ish every night. Seems I can't get anything done as fast as I'd like. Finally, things are warmed up to a balmy 36 and I was able to continue fairing the keel trailing edge and started the bottom paint. Here is what things looked like at the end of today and a 'before' shot.

Ruder Delam

Noticed some issues with the rudder while sanding....a little delamination of the skin in a couple of places. Easy fix by bringing the whole thing home and drilling a few holes and injecting with epoxy with a tight fitting syringe. It took more epoxy than I thought, but now it's solid everywhere.

Bow done

Last week I also got the bow pulpit back on and the track re-installed and worked a little on fairing the trailing edge. Nice, no leaks up top and it it much sturdier than it was. I did not take any photos today, but I faired a bunch more on the keel and it's starting to blend in very nicely....thank you belt sander! :)

Trailing Edge Addition

It was snowing last week when I did this....was below 30, but still ok to get some work done. This is the G10 board that I used to replace the trailing edge of the keel where it was removed. I ended up only needing to extend the keel about 1.5" to maintain proper chord. Up near the top was a little fatter and all I could do was add a triangle section to fill in the space. Not optimum, but way better than it was. I drilled the G10 every 6" and used stainless screws with the heads cut off as pins. The whole thing is held on with epoxy/microfiber mix and some light uni. The photo from the back is pretty nice and shows the trailing edge. When this is finally faired in it will get sanded to about 1/8".

Keel Drawing

Well, this is what I finally decided on doing for the keel...it's a photoshop version. :) Also, here is a picture looking up into what's left of the keel stub.

More Blisters

Well, the blisters I left last year were still here this year....and bigger. So, I decided while the weather was nice I'd grind off a few more....jeez there were a bunch!

New Bulkhead

Finally, I got this thing tabbed in. I still need to add a tab on the face and then paint it with POR-15 white....mmm, nice.

Finished Bulkhead

Here is the finished bulkhead after glassing in the fiberglass tube. Very stiff, prety light. Should be warm this weekend, hope to get this at least lightly tabbed in.

Bulkhead Progress

Ok, been doing some tracing, cutting-out and lamination of the forward bulkhead. The design has a flange to accept a cross member that will take up the compression loads up there so I can cut out most of the middle. This is two layers of 6mm ply with 6oz UNI glass as a skin. The fibers are alligned along the compression loads to prevent flexing....this thing is much stiffer than I expected!!