We had a lovely little battle yesterday to try out a small pond in the front yard of one of our members. Hovey got up at 7am and spent 4 hours clearing the pond (more than twice the size visible in the photo below) of the 4 inch thick slab of ice that capped it so we could battle.
That reminds me of my swim to retrieve the USS Houston in 15 ft of water. That was on Christmas Eve. I had a not so watertight wetsuit on and a 10ft pole. I was unable to retrieve it. 3 days later I had a friend who used a Artic cold water dive suit and he recovered it in less than a minute 50 ft from shore. We had to break the ice up to allow him to swim beneath the ice. It was cool seein the Houston through the ice just below it as it cruised towards the shore,well it had help because the diver pushed it forward. The bbs rolled out of the barrels and froze on the deck due to the wind chill that day. After drying it out all was well and it functioned normally.
