I was reading one of the other threads that had wandered pretty far off topic, and the subject had changed over to building a pond, and what the minimum size would be. This got me wondering, what are the smallest bodies of water people have battled in? The following pictures are of the 'mudhole' that we battled in over Labor Day weekend this year. I'm not sure of the overal dimensions, but there was a lot of unusable area that resulted in a lot of groundings. Hopefully the pictures give a decent sense of scale. Everything left of the Derf here was too shallow to be usable. To the 'upper-left' of the Scharnhorst here is also unusable The I-boat is near the edge of the usable area again in the upper-left
Wow, a knife fight in a phone booth! I would say that if you guys were mostly running WWI boats, that would be the minimum size pond right there, and not for more than 6 boats or so. If you had any WW2 or any fast cruisers or destroyers, you'd be looking for a bigger pond. A bunch of predreads ould play there though, although there would be little room for tactical finesse
Is it time for some mine laying? Only benefit is that it might be a good time to be able to clean up some of the water hazards and things in areas of the pond you normally can't get to, before the rains fill things up again.
We (WWCC) got into this subject pretty heavily when we were asked to battle at Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. Since there is no pond there, we needed to design and engineer one that we could set up and fill in less than a day, and drain and disassemble in a few hours at the end of the event. We were given a space that allowed a pond no larger than 46' x 70'. That turns out to be just big enough for standard Big Gun ships to battle normally. Battleships have just enough room to do 360 degree turns in that space, but a fast destroyer (Fantasque) running at full speed can't do it. A Big Gun Fantasque, running at full speed, is about as fast as a Fast Gun WWII fast battleship speed. Rob
So, given that the area of a tennis court is 78' x 36', it might be a bit tight for big gun ships? I've always thought of a tennis court as a minimum dimension for battling.
For our mudhole battle, we were lucky in that none of the WW2 cruisers were sailing that day. The Scharnhorst and the Richelieu were the biggest on the water and they had a rough time and pretty much opted to rule the mid-section of the water. What we learned from this is that it was entirely possible to battle in a very small location, and have a lot of fun, but as Tugboat figured, 6 ships was getting a bit tight and anyone that relied on speed normally was disadvantaged from the start. Thinking about the size, I think it was maybe 20x30 of usable water. It was something we could put up with for a day, but for any sort of regular battling it just wouldn't do. With that said, if my mental guesstimate is even close to accurate, I would think a tennis court size would prove suitable, though still challenging, for a battle - but the fun factor would vary based on the ships involved and how many ships were on the water. I should comment that this was not a normal state for this pond - it had been drained and the in-flow diverted so that it could be dredged out, we were just unaware of it until we showed up. Normally it is considerably larger.
and that let the little boats Pick on them Right!! I love scharnhorst!!!! Anyway, when my family was living in Burke VA, we had a runoff strem back behind the townhomes. and if we were this there I would have had a place to run both of my ships!! Nikki
This is very informative as I have been thinking about this topic a lot the past year. There is some property I have an eye on with a pond that is about 60' x 115' in the late summer and 70' x 175' in the spring and fall. The biggest problem is that the battle site (and house that goes with it) are in a flood plain, and there have been floods that have closed the road twice in the past three years.
i know nick u were referiing to me anyway i thought about for fast gun a 3 foot deep pond with 20 x 23 feet. I wanted to build this so there could be an alternative to battling in NC
A tennis court would be big enough for Big Gun - just barely. I'm talking about the minimum size that would be fun, battle after battle. The thing is that to have the full experience of combat, you really need to have room to maneuver, and at least some chance of running away to regroup. By the way, you really don't need 3 feet of depth. A foot to 18" is plenty. This is especially important to consider if you have to pump water to keep the pond full. Our artificial pond: 46' x 70' - is only made of 2" x 12"s. That means the depth is rarely above 10 1/2". But that's still around 18,000 gallons of water. Rob
well thank's y'all i will take all of this to heart. the only reason i wanted it to be deep was because i wwanted to make sure that no boats would get stuck in low water.
Danielle and I played around a little today with her tramp steamer the SS War Penquin in our creek.. yeah, creek. It was fun and actually had a lot more room to move around then I expected. We actually think if we had a handful of really tight turning Dreadnoughts we could have a mini battle in the slow part of the creek... it would be kinda interesting.
wow that is awesome! I have two creeks. The one is more like a fast moving stream and the other is wide and long.
The pond at Wade's rules. It's fairly small, perhaps about 3/4 the size of the small side of the pond at H&H Ranch in Houston. One Japanese captain has dubbed Wades "Donkey Ball Pond." This was a great pond to battle in, just enough room for the 24 sec ships to run and duck, and lots of spaces for sluggers to slug. I believe that Wade said the pond takes about 1/2 an acre of space on a 3 acre lot. Plus it has a sweet channel and a bridge.
The pond at my parent's house is a great size. We used to have battles there every Labor day weekend. Sadly, it's been about 8 years since it was cleaned out of weeds and they have totally taken over. It's going to be a major deal to get it deweeded again since it's been left alone for so long. But during the winter all the weeds die off and it's a great place to test boats still. I'm counting the days until cold weather allows me to go sail boats again.. It is a great size. Big enough to allow lots of room to move around and retreat (panies) but no so big that ships that get disabled drift really far away. It WAS a little deep in parts, but not too crazy, maybe 10-12 feet in the very middle. However, most of the time the ships that sunk landed ontop of a underwater weed bed 4-5 feet under and just got stuck in it and didn't go all the way down. Pictures from last year doing some ship testing. Heh, it's not normally that brown as it is in the first couple of pictures, there had just been a huge storm and the creek was rushing in pretty hard.
I've got pictures somewhere of me sailing one of my transports in a rain puddle. It was a big rain puddle, but still less than 6'x6' of water deep enough to sail in.
wow that is shallow! I wonder if it would be possible if I could some how make a 3rd creek and connect the two to make a pond.
Anyway, when my family was living in Burke VA, we had a runoff strem back behind the townhomes. and if we were this there I would have had a place to run both of my ships!! I might asked my mom to take me over to the old house so i can take some photos of it!! Nikki
