Teams split up for the first battle. It was the Invincible, Adm. Sheer, and Lutzow vs. the Warspite, Montcalm, and Roberts. "Roberts under substitute rookie Capt. Ceara Maxwell."
The battle started badly for the Montcalm. She tried to shoot across the current at the head of the pond and was rolled over and under she went. The Roberts emptied her guns early and hid out in protected water between the shore and the worst of the current. That left the Warspite to fend off three opposing ships. The Warspite had shown up with a fresh skin, new paint and an overhaul on her guns. Not quite the target we were used to and hoping for. The Warspite and the Invincible traded passing sidemounts while the Lutzow and Adm. Sheer chased her around the pond. Everyone ran out of BB's at about the same time and the battle was called with disappointingly little damage the Warsite. The best came from Alex with his weak firing bow gun. He put a nice series of holes....er.... dents along one side of the Warspite.
Teams remained the same for the second battle. The Montcalm again was an early exit after a head on ram with the Lutzow. Her batteries shifted and she took on a bad list and was barley able to make it to shore before sinking. Ceara did much better in the second battle. Mixing it up and lining up for some nice shots. I distinctly remember her gleeful shouts of "I got you Dad". The rest of the battle was relatively uneventful. The Invincible and the Warspite again traded passing side mounts, while the Lutzow and the Adm. Sheer still tried to chased her. Both the Invincible's and Lutzow's batteries were questionable, so they were not able to aggressively chase the Warspite. One by one the ships used up their BB's and went on five.
We decided on one more battle. As we were short on time and no one had any serious damage we went out without patching. The teams remained the same again. This was by far the closest matched battle. All six ships were mixing it up and trading shots. The Warspite and later the Montcalm were playing a game of come and get me by running up one side of the current or the other then shooting down the middle making it difficult to get a good shot. Then it was the Roberts turn to get sideways in the current with the same results as the Montcalm. The Roberts went down stern first but the motors were still running and pushed the bow back to the surface and we could see her bow bobbing along in the current for another 10-15 feet before she slid below the surface. This put an effective end to any real battling.
Darrel and Ceara made their way to the end of the pond to make sure that the Roberts didn't go over the 3 foot falls where the water leaves the pond and Phill went to the far shore to see if he could see anything from there. Did I mention the muddy water? Visibility was about a foot at best. Suddenly there was a loud splash from the tail of the pond. It seems that Darrel had gone over the falls instead of the Roberts. Luckily nothing was injured except pride. Since he was wet already Darrel started the search for the Roberts. Did I mention the Pond was deeper that normal? After 15-20 minutes cold water forced Darrel to give up the search with only a tire for his trouble. Out came Phil's dry suit and another 30-45 minutes of searching 4 to 6 foot deep water, but still no Roberts. By this time Al and Alex had the car packed and came back down for moral support. Alex had the brilliant idea to fire the gun of the Robert. Large Bubbles appeared outside the search area, almost 40 feet from where the Roberts was last seen! Hooray for Alex! and many thanks to Phill for giving Ceara the opportunity to Captain the Roberts.
The first battle saw the attacking team in trouble before the battle even started. Larry's DD had almost no charge on the transmitter and one of the guns on John's Invicvible broke on the bench. Battle was called and these two plus the Montcalm and HMS Roberts went forward to do battle with the Warspite, Invincible and Adm Scheer. The early part of the battle went fairly evenly with the DD, Montcalm and Roberts taking what shots could be had and John's Invincible tangling closer with the other ships. Then things went downhill quickly. The DD went on two, John's Invincible went down gracefully with only 6 belows and there was a pop and clouds of CO2 came out the sides of the Montcalm. The DD came in to shore with six holes. The Montcalm headed to the far reaches and hid in a cove to wait out her five. The Invincible was retrieved from the bottom and battle started back up with the entire defending team ganging up on the HMS Roberts with seven year old Danny at the helm. At once the Roberts gun was empty and for the next two minutes she wove in and around the enemy ships. Without an accurate timer, we think she lasted out the two minutes but struggled hard and sank only a couple of feet short of the shore. A very impressive feat by our youngest captain!
The second sortie saw the arrival of Darin's Northampton (long drive from Portland) and the retirement of Larry's DD due to a soaked rudder servo. The teams were mixed up some in hopes of a better balance. Fairly early into the battle the Northampton moved too close to the far shore and got fouled in the weeds. The usual feeding frenzy erupted. The Northampton didn't even start pumping but the bow above the waterline looked like swiss cheese! The Warspite came to the rescue. While trying to get lined up on the Warspite, Al's Invincible backed into the Montcalm and sent her to the bottom. All the remaining ships gathered around the Northampton and the Roberts manouvered in close enough to push her free. The Roberts then got stuck. Most of the action returned to the middle of the pond and Danny's Dad (having been sunk) had to go untangle the Roberts. The Northampton did a fairly good job of staying out of the way and ran out her five. Al's Invincible went dead in the water without the circling ships figuring this out. The Roberts came in to try to push her to shore and the contact was enough to restart the Invincible.
The third sortie started with another mixing of the teams and resulted in by far the hardest fought battle of the day. The Warspite, Adm Scheer and Roberts took the south end of the pond, Al's Invincible, the Montcalm and the Northampton took the North. Battle was called and the Montcalm suddenly found it's self in a hail of BB's from the Roberts. Speed and caution prevailed and Montcalm withdrew. Shortly the Adm Sheer found enemy ships on both sides and took quite a bit of damage getting out of trouble. For several minutes there was much milling around with a few shots taken from time to time. The Roberts empted her gun and headed to she shallow water to wait out the rest of the battle. The Adm Scheer and the Northampton traded shots and the Montcalm and Invincible pestered the Warspite. The Northampton went on five and played cat and mouse with the Adm Scheer and the Warspite. The stern of the Warspite settled some but the pump never ran steadily. First the Montcalm, and then the Adm Sheer ran out of BB's. Finally, with no BB's left on the water, Peace returned and all ships were retrived. This battle was scored on hits: Warspite 26, Adm Sheer 25, Roberts 2 vs Invincible 10, Montcalm 8, Northampton 5.
From John, Just finished checking my damage to my ship. It's no wonder my bilge pump didn't work, one of the brush springs broke. Both barrels on my operative cannons were dinged, so the B.B.s wouldn't go through,and the valve on my inopt cannon was leaking. All in all, I didn't have a fighting chance.
After much delay, the first battle got underway. Partway through the battle, the Montcalm's balast shifted and after trying hard to keep running, she sank. Keith and John kept up the pressure but lost out on points in the end.
The second battle was more intense than the first as some of the problems with systems were fixed and confidence built up. No one was willing to call the battle until there were no BB's left on the water. One of our guests took the helm of the Roberts and was able to score some good hits on Al's Invincible. Al had low batteries which helped. The opposition claims victory in this battle.
The last battle saw the withdrawl of John's Invincible due to problems. The Roberts with Ceara at the helm, sank early in the battle. The Roberts had taken several hits in the bow and was unable to get the water to the pump with a rookie captain. The Montcalm lost it's trim weight into the stern when sinking on the first battle. The weight caused rudder problems and dragged the stern down. The gradual loss of rudder control, battle damage and waves sunk the Montcalm. With the second sink the opposition lost any chance of claiming the battle. The Northampton took a ram from Al's Invincible and went down quickly. (beware of your team mates!)
Keith and Alex with the Deutchland class ships, win the reliability award for the day. Keith showed that he can take a lot of damage and still keep going. Darin also gets a pat on the back for showing up with a untested ship and actively participating in three battles!
From: Keith Subject: Battle on Sunday "OUCH!" After 40 minutes of patching Sunday night I still only had half of the boat done. I wanted to thank Al, Alex and Darren for helping me to test my bilge pump.
The Warspite has proven to be very difficult seriously damage even though it took lots of bb's. Dan's HMS Roberts was the target on a couple of occasions but is such a hard target that she ended the day with only a single hole. One well placed shot blew pieces of foam out from under the gun of the Graff Spee. No damage, no points, but it looked really good! The Invincible has undergone a conversion to refillable CO2 and wasn't quite ready for prime time. We do not expect this to last! With another ship under construction in the Portland area we may get to travel South to battle! On our last battle of the day, one of the guests took the helm of the Roberts and scored a couple of good hits on careless crusiers.
Kevin Rovegno running the Graff Spee gets the Play-of-the-day award. The Spee, took a sidemount hit from the Warspite that blew out a large exit hole below the waterline. Kevin fought hard to bring her back to shore but the damage was too much and she slipped under the crystal clear water in a picture perfect sink just three feet from shore. Tom promises to get the internal armour installed before the next battle even though everyone assured him that it was not really necessary.
>From: Keith >Subject: Did Keith not have problems???? > >You missed the beautiful sink at the end of the first sortie......... >loose set screw in the bilge pump!!! Only three holes and only one of >those near the water line. You remember that little ram incident in the >2nd sortie? Well is seems that someone's battery charger is not up to the >task, as I was out of control with the second set of batteries going dead. >I was able to borrow a set from John since his Invincible wasn't going >anywhere and was able to get back out for the 2nd battle.