2022 A Year in Port Polar Bear

Brouhaha Sat/Sun March 19, 20 2022

Brouhaha 2022 (14^th annual) was attended by Bob (Nagato), Andy (Nagato), Mike S (Seydlitz), Peter (Erin), and Tyler (Tiger). Also in attendance were Mike T (Scharnhorst), Gerald (on loan Liberte), Dirty (Kongo), Tom P (interwar proposed Montana), Rick (Jamaica), Ted (VDT and Scheer), Wade (Lutzow). Tyler, Bob, and Andy drove and stopped at the Sullivan Brothers Museum in Waterloo, Iowa for about an hour on the way down, it was $1 Thursday. We stopped over night north of Jackson, MS and drove to Batton Rouge on Friday to see the museum ship the USS Kidd, which was pretty cool, well worth the stop. Mike and Peter went to the ship as well on Monday before their flight left.

The attendance was a little lighter than usual. We mixed the teams every battle and were able to get in 3 complete battles each day. The battling was fairly close in terms of scores. The Polar Bears generally fought in some combination against each other all weekend though it would have been cool to try a PPB vs the World battle. The most lop sided battle was when Tyler and Bob were on the same team, the other capitol ships were the Scharnhorst which was having some technical issues off and on and the Kongo which had to withdraw right before battle started and didn’t make the water for any of the battle. Tyler’s drive shaft bound in the first sortie and the outcome was a massacre as it was basically only Bob left with a functional capital ship on that fleet vs the rest of the field. We experienced a few minor breakdowns that were generally fixed between sorties: Tiger had the port shaft bind and a few pump issues, Andy had accidentally unplugged a drive motor ESC for a sortie and at a different time lost drive due to I think a gear issue and later had a gun up-feed issue, Bob had two of the input battery plugs come loose but didn’t effect performance before he found the issue and fixed it, Peter and Mike both had pump issues which lead to sinks as well and Peter also had a rock jam his rudders. Wade took out a ship (Lutzow) that was newly constructed by Ted and a few of the Texas guys and made 4 sorties. Gerald intended to fight his Kongo class battle cruiser but had major drive/ESC issues and ended up using Brandon’s French pre-dreadnaught Liberte on it’s first combat sea trial. Overall, it felt good to get things started for the season and it really put me in a mood to work on ships.

It’s a good thing too, as we took home an additional 10 semi-completed ships or fresh hulls from Gerald’s collection (plus Tom will be bringing 2-3 more that were not able to fit when he comes in May), as well as most of John S’s gear and few ships that he still had at Wade’s. Tyler’s truck was completely full of stuff very carefully packed to the max, though we joked on the way home that we should have tried harder and been more dedicated to get a few more ships in as we could have held a few on our laps for the 17.5 hour drive.

We stayed at a different hotel for the first time that I can remember that was a little further out of town, it was much nicer and more expensive but essentially every hotel in the vicinity was completely booked by FEMA workers and displaced people from Hurricane Ida that hit in the fall of 2021. Wade’s house was still completely gutted to the studs. I try to keep tabs on the ever-changing restaurant in the parking lot of the old hotel, this time it was Mariano’s where we had our awards banquet on Sunday as we typically do, oddly enough there was an “American Idol” watch party for a contestant who was a New Orleans native who advanced past the initial round of auditions in the restaurant, which without that group we probably would have had the place to ourselves as usual but with them it was very crowded and noisy. Peter and Mike on arrival took a hitchhiker in their rental car from the airport to a near by neighborhood, Mike is just a friendly guy looking for good deeds, evidently when they dropped her off the household she went up to didn’t recognize her, I wonder how that ever turned out.

Awards: Best of Class: 6-8 Tom, 5 Mike T, 4 Mike S, 1-3 Rick. Most Feared Allied: Tyler. Most Feared Axis: Bob. Best of Scale: Mike T (3d printed Scharny). Winning Admiral: Peter. Losing Admiral: Peter.

Next battle is Memorial Weekend Saturday and Sunday May 28/29. The Royals are in town playing the Twins Friday May 27 so we will probably check out a baseball game that weekend as well.

Tyler

PPB Memorial Weekend Battle Sat/Sun May 28, 29 2022

We hosted our typical 2 day Memorial Weekend battle. The local regulars in attendance were: Tyler (Yamato), Andy (Nagato), Bob (John’s Kongo), Zach (Nagato), Peter (Erin), Mike (Seydlitz), Bryan (Idaho), McCoy (Zara), Addie (Tourville). The KC regulars came up as well: Tom (Montana), Rick (Jamaica). We had two of the old regulars show up: Ron, Ryan. And we had two new hopefully-soon-to-be regulars come to their first battle: Caden, Owen. We were able to do 6 complete battles.

On Friday night 8 of us went to the first place Twins vs last place Royals game which was really fun. The game was fairly long and Tyler/McCoy left in the 7^th and the rest left in the 8^th. I think the game ended at 10:40. Twins won which saved us a bunch of money on the Saturday post battle Pizza. Tom was a team player and told his guys to lose for us. The teams ended up splitting the series 2-2.

As is typical the Saturday morning battle was slightly slow getting started because of the usual get stuff set up, clear a path/weed whack, ‘I thought that system was working fine’ type of delays. The first day was mostly Tyler, Tom, Peter, McCoy, Addie, Owen vs Andy, Zach, Bob, Mike, Rick, Caden. Ron/Ryan ran the Derfflinger 2 a little bit but she had some unusual gun problems, I think the elbow is already wearing out and causing jams. The first 2 battles were extremely close with score differentials less than 1000 points and each team taking a win. The 3^rd battle got out of hand and Andy’s team won by 5900 points. Bob was battling John’s Kongo that had been sitting in a New Orleans attic for the better part of a decade and expectedly had some issues with gun boards, damage control, and glitching. Towards the end of the weekend it was working fairly well and was on par with the more competitive Kongos I’ve seen. In the 2^nd battle Andy got caught in a hole because his forward acceleration wasn’t up to snuff and Tyler emptied the entire dual stern sidemount from the Yammer into him, he sank in 30 seconds and had 50 below. He was a victim of circumstance as Tyler had just happened to see a good opportunity and wasn’t really targeting him. The Yamato sank in all 3 battles on Saturday with moderate damage, somewhat due to really poor hull skin and somewhat due to pump problems. I was later able to change the length of pump hose and it made a huge difference for the poorly functioning starboard pump, I’m really glad I sank 3 times at the local battle so I could play with things and figure that out before Nats. Another improvement to the Yamato I am making is to move the guns closer to shooting parallel, they were too far apart and their convergence point was too erratic, hopefully this will blow more panels out.

Sunday was also a little slow going due to weather, there was morning rain and storms that were mostly breaking up by the time they were hitting the battle pond but we ended up waiting to set up until 9 rather than the usual 8AM. For the first two battles we had similar teams but Zach and Peter flipped sides. The first battle was a blow out 6000 point win for the Tyler/Tom/Zach team enabled by pump clog on Andy’s Nagato, Bryan eating a dual Yammer sidemount, Bob having ship issues and sinking early/often, and Mike also having some pump issues. The second battle was much closer with a 850 point Andy/Bob team win. Yammer had put what seemed like a crushing sidemount pass into the Seydlitz and spent the rest of the battle chasing him to try to put her down. Mike has an amazing stern deck seal and was able to back out essentially submerged several times. Eventually getting caught next to shore, several ships tried to prop wash her under but couldn’t do it, despite having an impressive score of 34a-29o-42b. That little boat is hard to sink. The third battle was one of attrition: Bob resorted to taking out Zach’s Nagato after Zach left. Andy and Bryan only made it 1 sortie. We ended up again trying to prop wash Mike’s Seydlitz which had a score of 78a-18o-36b and were again not able to do so. We played around after the battle by holding it under and watching in amazement as it kept popping back up until we finally got the critical amount of water on board. Also after the battle McCoy and Addie re-loaded and shot up the Yamato for gunnery practice.

Both days we had brats pond side for lunch. Owen’s mom brought brownies, rice crispy bars, and cookies. The two new captains Owen and Caden who ran Bob’s and Brandon’s pre-dreads seemed to have a very good time, hopefully they will stick around. It was also awesome that Ron and Ryan came out Saturday, it had been roughly 8 years since they battled last and hopefully they have found the itch again. As I was compiling scores it amazed me how much damage we are taking, it seems that our ship building quality is really going up. There were 18 times that a capital ship took 40+ below of the 46 battle data points, only 6 of them were sinks. 6 times a ship took 50+ below and only 3 of them were sinks, one of them was Tom who took 65 below and didn’t sink. There will always be circumstances that are not well reflected in the data points, but in general it seemed like the ships were taking a pounding and more often than not surviving it well.

Another fun thing I like to draw attention to is Rick not patching. He is clearly an experienced cruiser captain and can use his intuition/experience and his ship’s speed to stay out of trouble, totals for his entire 12 sorties were: 8 above, 4 on, 6 below. However, McCoy was right on his tail with 13 above, 6 on, 17 below. Perhaps he will one day take over the “Rick Whitsell - Do You Even Bring Patching Material? Take No Damage In A Cruiser Award.” McCoy told me that he was really trying to work on not getting caught by battleships, his gun skills are really getting good as well. I think it’s time to end the young guy grace period.

Nats is in July. We will battle again September 10/11, the weekend after Labor Day.

Tyler

NATS 2022, Ionia, MI. Jully 11-15, 2022

Andy, John, Matthew, McCoy, Tyler, Bob, Zach, Mike and Bryan attended. Tyler (Yamato) was the admiral of the Blue Fleet which won the week by 3000 points along with Bob (Nagato), Andy (Nagato), Matthew (Nagato), Mike (Seydlitz), McCoy (Zara). Red fleet members were Zach (Nagato), John (Kongo), Bryan (Texas/Idaho).

PPB Fall Battle Sat/Sun Sept 10,11 2022

We battled the weekend after Labor Day as we have done for a few years now. This seems to work out better for the families and as such we don’t have to burn as many brownie points that we would if we were battling both the long holiday Memorial and Labor Day weekends. MN guys: Tyler (Yamato), Andy (Nagato), Bob (Nagato), Zach (Nagato), Mike (Seydlitz), McCoy (Viribus Unitis). From KC: Tom (Montana), Rick (Jamaica). From MI: Kas (Washington), Mark (NC). Additionally, Caden and Owen came out. A week or so leading up to the battle Bob discovered that a critter (probably a beaver or muskrat) dammed the outflow culvert from the pond that goes under the foot path, to the stream, and eventually into Lake Susan causing the pond to be up at least a foot higher than usual if not two. The entire battling area was flooded out. Bob, Andy, and Mike were all able to at one point help tear the dam apart throughout the week and drain it back to the usual level. We will have to keep an eye on that, if we ever want grass to re-grow on our battle spot we have to keep it from being submerged. A few of the guys went to the Twins game Friday Night but there was a significant rain delay so they only saw the first 5 innings.

This was the first battle for the Viribus Unitis. McCoy really liked battling it, she performed fairly well though was a bit fast I think it will maintain the nimbleness that it seems to have. The guns generally worked well and the damage control was fair, it was never really in danger of sinking partially because he doesn’t quite know how to play sidemounts yet and was a bit too passive, but also because the guys seemed to give him the new boat 12 year old captain free pass, heads up next time McCoy. I started with 2 batteries but 3 makes it float much better and should help for those late sortie situations when it really has to sit and pump, it did over draw and lose power to the receiver twice, I’m thinking of putting in a separate receiver/solenoid battery to avoid that in the future. It will also need a little bit of water channeling and blocks to hold the batteries in place as well.

We basically arranged teams such that the Yamato and Montana would have a Nagato with them, but a different one every time (Zach, then Bob, then Andy). We split the NC’s. McCoy battled on his dad’s team all weekend. Owen battled the Kongo all Saturday. First battle Saturday Kas and Tom sank, Kas was turning trying to get around the back of a ship and drove himself under. Second battle Saturday somehow no body sank despite multiple ships with man-damage: Mike 64 below, Andy 58 below, Bob 55 below, Mark 45 below, Tyler 42 below. Third battle Saturday the Yamato had 115 above, 18 on, and 64 below and seemed to shrug it off, that big ship for better or worse sure collects bbs.

We had hot dogs, Doritos, and Owen’s mom’s cookies for lunch both days. Saturday night we had pizza and worked on ships in Bob’s garage.

Sunday Mike went to the Vikings game, Caden came out and drove Matt’s Nagato for the first battle then went to the Vikings game. Owen showed up and took the Nagato at that point. First Sunday battle saw all of the Nagatos sinking. Bob: 48-21-64, Caden 113-14-61, Andy 69-17-38, Zach 65-4-24. Tyler was able to catch Bob next to shore and put a dual stern sidemount hurt on in the 2^nd sortie. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, with 4 capital ships per side, when one falls it really concentrates fire and can snowball the battle. Andy and Caden were sunk shortly thereafter but Zach sunk trying to be sure they were finished off. Kas and Mark left around noon and we did one further battle where we pretty much refused to battle any further than 20 feet from shore, I joked that you were declared sunk if your boat left the shadow of the trees.

We decided to call it quits mid afternoon on Sunday and not do the typical 6^th full battle but rather be satisfied with 5 battles. Bob’s back was hurting, Andy’s back always hurts, Tom could only carry things with his left hand because he pulled something in his upper back, my back always hurts after hauling the Yammer around for a few days. No one under 39 seemed to complain of back pain. I’m worried we might be getting old, next time we will have to have the young bucks carry all our stuff around and launch the boats every time.

There is talk of a battle at Wades in New Orleans this November. Otherwise, PPB will be unlikely to battle until Memorial Weekend 2023 unless we do something small on relatively short notice. That leaves several months to get ship work done and be ready for next spring.

Tyler