November 17th- Coal Creek Park

October 17th- Swan Creek Park

Adam Wyant showed up with his Dad and Grandfather. He is building a Lutzow class cruiser so we spent much time showing him the internals of the various ships present. Ships: Westfalen, Adm Scheer, Mutsu, Suffren.

The best part of this battle was towards the end of the first sortie. The battery on the Suffren was not fully charged and she started to slow down. Ceara, sensing weakness, kept the Adm Scheer hounding the Suffren and as the Suffren's pump slowed, she dropped lower in the water. Finally, Ceara's efforts paid off and the Suffren slipped below the surface.

September 15th- Swan Creek Park

Ships present: Warspite, VU, Sharnhorst, Westfalen, Mutsu, Suffren, Roberts. The Mogador was run for a bit between battles with bits of wire poking out of the top of the hull. James showed up for a bit but didn't have time to battle. His orders are cut for early October. He will be back in the spring.

Four Sorties were completed with the Mutsu, Westfalen and Suffren taking on the rest. Battle was marked by close in fighting and consistant problems with the Roberts' gun. Danny learned the hard way about playing with his ship after the other ships where pulled out. He says the water was quite cold! Brett watched the Roberts sink in the first two sorties but finally got the hang of keeping her out of tight turns and stayed on the surface for the last two sorties.

With a modest fleet, we were able to turn the ships around quickly, do four sorties and still get home at a reasonable hour. Great new pond for the spring and fall battles! By acclaim, we will battle here again in October!

August 18th- Cle Elum

The day started out on a very cautious note with the Mutsu and N.C. nose to the beach, sterns towards the opposition while teammates Westfalen and Suffren harried the opposition. As the sortie continued, the N.C. became braver and both of the larger ships ventured further out. Late in the sortie, the VU was looking low in the water and her stern dropped under the water as she hit the beach. Basic captain error #1 was the cause. (forgetting to turn on the pump). The Westfalen had jammed a bb's in a magazine during the battle. Darrell grined and said to take a look at what he had built. After the pain of clearing the bb's out of the Warspite's guns, Darrell put together an adaptor which would force bottle pressure CO2 into the bottom of the interrupter. With a cap over the breach, this proved a quick and easy way to clear the magazine of a stuck bb's. A very useful tool to have at the pond!

The second sortie saw the N.C. restored in faith and becomming aggressive again. The spector of her sinks in the last contest faded. This battle saw a lot of close in slugging and the development of the box. This saw the stern of the Scharnhorst pointed at the Mutsu, Watching the bb's just bounce off the side of her, the Mutsu's captain continued to use her sterns on the side of the Warspite who was lined up on the Westfalen, who was pounding the side of the Scharnhorst. As it seemed that all of the captains were happy with this odd arrangement, it continued for quite a while. Late in the sortie, the Scharnhorst had power problems and she settled along the beach. Yellow claims this battle only because of the sinks. Neither were a direct result of bb damage.

The second battle would end in a draw with damage on both sides and no deciding event. The third sortie saw the Mutsu staying close to shore with radio issues but drawing the other ships in for an ongoing furball. Ceara nimbly brought the Suffren in through the other ships, and slipped out right next to the beach while using her stern guns to advantage. The Suffren only took a couple of shots during the process. The Mutsu and N.C targeted the Warspite and countinued to take shots in the process. With no bb's remaining on the water, the sortie was called.

After a very quick 20 munite interval, the ships launched again. The Mutsu's stern gun was found to have taken a bb's in one of the earlier sorties and had the barrel replaced. The previous furball continued with all of the ships staying in fairly close and playing hug and slug. The ships were starting to show signs of battle with a few guns no longer working. The battery of the Suffren ran down and she backed out of the battle to get stuck in the grass next to the island. Oddly enough, she had enough power to keep the pump running and remain on the surface until she was recovered after the battle. The large ships continued to circle and seek advantage but with a sense of relief, the guns fell silent with the end of the bb's.

An intense day of battling was enjoyed by all and the reliability of the fleet was much improved from the previous outing to the relief of all!

July 28th - Cle Elum

June 30th - Cle Elum, NW Regionals

First Battle

The first sortie started with the non-flagged battle ships heading for the island leaving the cruisers near shore with the Yellow Mutsu and Yamato. After chasing all three a bit, the Colbert was running slowly due to some current drain that was noticed before the battle. Heavy pounding from the battleships and she limped to shore without enough power to keep the pump going hard and settled to the bottom along the shore. She did not return for later sorties. Her team mates arrived having finally realized that something wasn't right. A general melee then took place along the near shore between the battleships. James' N.C. went dead in the water providing a target for the Westfalen. The Warspite kept the Westfalen from doing as much damage as it wanted

The second battle saw John's Invincible and Phill's Montcalm take to the water with volunteer captains. Paul took over the Suffren as Danny took a nap. The Westfalen, Indiana, Mutsu and Yamato sensed the easy prey of the Invincible and all hammered her very early into the battle. As her teammates sprang to her defense it was noticed that her pump wasn't running and no one questioned that it should have been pumping hard. She settled to the bottom as her bow touched the shore. Much jockeying near the shore slowly used up ammo. Ceara's batteries started to drop and out of ammo she called 5. As she came to shore, she blocked the Foch from making a clean getaway from the Yamato who was again trying to empty her triples into cruisers. The Foch, being a gentleman, carefully worked around Ceara and found that the Yamato has another stern weapon. The wake of the Yamato rolled over the Foch and in addition to the existing holes, overcame her pump and she too settled to the bottom. The Montcalm had done a reasonable job of staying out of the way and using her stern gun to take pot shots from time to time. She caught a large wake and some of her ballast shifted. With the rougher conditions of a windy pond it was a matter of time before she was brought towards shore where she was caught just as she rolled. Late in the battle the Foch went dead in the water and was pushed ashore. She would not return for the next battle.

The third sortie was generally fought closer to the shore. With most of the cruisers gone, there was much tighter battling among the battleships. The Warspite had pump problems right at the start but she came in and got the outlet hose reconnected. The HMS Roberts blew a poppet at the start of the battle but tried to cause trouble without her gun. Rough water and a bad pump switch turned fatal after a few minutes and she rolled on her side in shallow water. Much of the last 10 minutes of this sortie saw the battleships slugging it out near the beach. There was a general sense of relief when the last gun finally ran out of BB's.

The fourth sortie was quickly started with seven ships still operational. Close battling between the various ships was the norm as all of the remaining ships were willing to stand and fight. Late in this sortie, the Adm Scheer ran out of control and carefully nosed into the island. She lasted better than ten minutes before low power and waves crashing over the stern drove her under. Thanks to the Yamato, her skin looked like swiss cheese when she was pulled out. Tired ships and captains and fewer working guns limited the actual damage but the fighting was hard and fierce. Fairly soon, all of the BB's were gone and the battle was called.

The yellow flag team claims the first battle. The lack of support for the cruisers and the quick targeting of rookies made the big difference. The second battle had no clear winner as both sides both gave and took a lot of punishment. All in all, a great day at the pond!

June 2nd - Cle Elum

May 5th - Cle Elum

Greg's Yamato is set up with (2) pumps. We go a look at how good the pumps worked when he got a nasty ram in the last sortie. This ship will be virtually unsinkable. Westfalen was running on a low battery in the first sortie, and was very slow and ineffective. Second sortie I had one of the guns adjusted too high, so I was only running with one effective gun. Last sortie I had two working guns and was running at speed. Much better.

March 30th - Three Ring Circus

Arriving at Midway [aka. Cle Elum] and still not finding anyone to battle, the treacherous Yamashiro turned on her admiral's flagship. Luckily, this had been foreseen and all but the two aft guns were disabled. After about 45 minutes of setup and with mostly empty co2 tanks the two ships engaged. Yamato had misfiring trouble on her starboard sidemounts (later determined to be debris in the piston) which resulted in her port sidemounts being available along with the triple sterns. Yamato also noticed an interesting design flaw... the wake well right behind the ship is high enough that at Flank speed the sterns hit the wake, (this will be corrected before the next battle) instead of going on... Yamashiro had discovered that she only had sterns... and that the Yamato while not having quite as tight a turning circle at speed, could make a 180 degree turn much faster. With this, the only thing left for the Yamato to do was to chase the enemy... Needless to say, Yamato emptied her triple sterns with some good hits on the Yamashiro, but the additional experience of her captain and ship along with the blood lust on the part of the Yamato and her new hull (as opposed to a holed and unpatched hull that made counting impossible on the Yamashiro) insured that while neither ship was in danger, it was the Yamashiro that would officially win the day.

March 16th - Called Off

Feburary 23rd - Fort Lewis

James got us onto the base and we headed to lake Sealxxxxth. We set up Paul's canopy only to find that he had spaced on bringing the cover for it (again!). Fortunately the big tarp covered it nicely. We proceeded to set up ships in a light rain.

After much fuss, the Richelieu was declaired dead. The Suffren was powered up instead. Rad's new Veribus Unitus was put in the water. James' North Carolina, Paul's Colbert and Darrell's Warspite rounded out the fleet. At the start of the second sortie the Richelieu was also on the water for a few minutes before going dead again.

Three sorties were completed. The cold took it's toll on both ships and captains (the support staff hid in the cars and kept warm). Much of the second sortie had the Suffren trying to put holes in the VU. Aim was fine as were tatics but the cold was rendering the Suffren's guns too weak. You could hear the bb's hitting the VU but was it drove past the beach, no holes were visible in the sides.

After putting clamps on most of the Warspite's large hoses, the third sortie found the Colbert dead to frozen poppets. The Suffren tested her guns but as soon as battle was called, they also froze up. The stern guns of the N.C. were also frozen. The Warspite took on the VU and quickly eliminated the possibility that the VU could head home after a day of battling with no damage to patch. Late in the battle, the VU was run on shore when control was lost. There was an interesting match of the Warspite trying to get a clear shot with the Suffren helping (mostly) and the N.C. trying to protect the VU. Finally no offensive capability was left and we called it a day.

Sunday turned out nice with blue sky and sun. I haulled the ships and boxes outside to dry out. A couple of hours later, I took out the turkey baster and pulled standing water out of the tool boxes!