2016 A Year in Port Polar Bear

Saturday/Sunday May 28/29 2016

A brief summary on the Ice Breaker this weekend.

Captains in attendance:
Bob Warspite
Zach I boat
Andy Barham
Tyler Nagato
Mike NC
Peter Kaiser
Hudson Kingo
Randy Smurfatura
Kas iBoat
Mark Nagato
Tom Warspite
Rick Jamaica

Jason stopped by so I could test his new laser cut and 3D printed super pump. Engineer school pays off.
Friday a few of us went to the BBQ place in town.
We had a light rain 50% of the day on Saturday with no with no wind. We battled 6 sorties starting at 9:30 (late start) left the pond around 4:30. Lots of action and sinks. I think Mark replaced a rudder servo. Only break down of the day no delay to battles.
Sunday was sunny and warm with a little wind blowing at us. Again lots of action, we don't wait around in Port Polar Bear. We got in 6 sorties again left the pond around 5pm. Took a little longer because the nice weather brought out more wondering and talking. Mike changed motors as we patched after battle 2, no delay. Zach and Tyler both had a solder connection break loose in the 6th sortie of the day. Our only ship break downs of Saturday. Tyler's was his main power line and sank him. Zach was a drive motor connection, he sank too, since not moving leads to lots of holes.  
Monday we did three sorties. Ricks rudder servo died before battle. He missed all sorties.
That was it. We did 15 sorties and had NO delays caused by ship repairs. Only one ship missed sorties because of a failure and he could have made it if wanted to make us wait 10-15 min. Build well, battle more.

Bob H

Attached are the scores from the Ice Breaker.
I'm a numbers guy and have kept scores for a lot of battles. A few funny things I saw:
Everyone always talks about how the Brouhaha is a blood bath. This year at the Brouhaha I took 553 holes, the top hole getter was 631. At the Ice Breaker I took 949 holes, nearly double. I'm not the only one, multiple ships took well over 500 holes. I used the same skin at Wade's as I did for the Ice Breaker 1,502 total holes in one sheeting job.

I loved my On & Below scores this weekend on a pretty used sheeting job. It's not like I site there and let people shoot me, or take all the damage in the last seconds before I sink.
Ons Belows
31          70     sunk
40          81     sunk
19          47     sunk There was one section I could stick three fingers into below the waterline.
15          29     sunk This is the sortie I was chasing Tyler to try and sink him and went against the waves too much, drove myself under.
9            31    no sink, why didn't anyone shoot me
30         70    no sink

Bob H 

Saturday/Sunday October 1/2 2016

We could not have found a better battling weekend, weather wise, than we did for this year's Ice Breaker. Temps in the 70s, sunny, hardly any wind, no weeds in the pond, perfect. This was the first time PPB had a second two day battle in a summer. Typically we have one Sunday afternoon battle each month but schedules as kids get older are getting fuller faster. When Tyler & I were picking a date for the battle we grabbed the first weekend we both had free. Neither of us knew the Ryder Cup was being held that weekend at a course a couple miles from my house and the pond. Since there were no hotel rooms in the area I hosted Tom P & Rick W in my basement. They arrived Friday and we went out for dinner.

Saturday & Sunday for battle we had:
Tom P QE
Rick W Jamaica
Mike S NC
Tyler H QE
Hudson M Kongo
Peter E Kaiser
Andy T QE
Bob H. ID 
McCoy H Frog CA
Eric (14 ROY) joined us in a Frog CA on Saturday.

During the weekend we changed fleets around several times as we had an odd number of capitol ships. Battle was the normal PPB blood bath with several sinks each battle. We even had a fire in a ship this weekend. Something that has not happened since Lars' Bellerophon flipped over on a rock years ago. Mike was using an ESC for the first time. He had it installed in his radio box at first and it turned off on thermal overload. Some pond side rewiring got it out of the box and into the water channel. A couple sorties later the ESC was on in enough water and smoked itself, I can still smell it on my hands.

Saturday night we sat around in my garage with pizza and boat repairs.

Sunday we battled again with no major breakdowns that I remember. We were going to add Zach to the fleets but Saturday night his cousins called and needed a fill in for their baseball team. He couldn't decide what to do so flipped a coin and boats lost.

Over the two days we got in 6 battles with 12 sorties and were packing up around 3-4pm. If we had more batteries we could have got a couple more sorties in.

This pretty much ends the battling season for 2016. Get those new ships started and those old ones refit for next year!

Bob H