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Battlecruiser 7-Mar-2013 At 3:02:16 PM Doug

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Good detailed post about your encounter with Battlecruiser, Wendy!
I'd agree with you about the description for Space Cowboys being overstated. There are really nice moves on it, the pitch takes you out left to the arete and then back right into Battlecruiser after about 10 metres, so there isn't that much different climbing. (Probably not better than sex unless - like you say - you're not doing it right!) But I've never thought it is two grades harder than the second pitch of Battlecruiser itself.

Re the full Battlecruiser experience and the merit of three stars, just about every trad pitch on the Organ Pipes has some rock that could be described as "loose". But there is "loose" and "dangerously loose". You can easily climb around all the loose stuff on Battlecruiser and get good gear in without using any of the loose stuff.
On the first pitch, I reckon Douglas made the mistake that many people - including me on at least one occasion - make and thrutched up the crack around the overhang, rather than stepping out left and up, just using the crack for jams with the right hand. (I was on it a couple of weeks ago and the fellow who was leading the first pitch - who has also climbed it a number of times before, started to make the same mistake before realising he was being silly!)
The second pitch is fantastic: the improbable (at the grade) undercling out left in a wonderful position and then sustained climbing up to the arete is world class. Leading up to there, you can actually stay out of the crack most of the way, side-pulling and stepping on little ledges. But the crack certainly wants to suck you into it if you're not careful - kinda like a black hole, I reckon.
In terms of getting off, the guide could be clearer for sure. Basically, the best thing is to keep going straight up near the arete, and the bolts eventually appear right in front of your nose. this section up to the belay would be much better with a bit more of the vegetation removed (it wasn't there when Law and Bowman did the first ascent way back in 1978). There is work afoot to tidy up some of these scrubby sections on some of the classics on Mount Wellington, but this isn't meeting with universal approval.
Oh, by the way: you must have been working with Al Adams edition of the guide if you thought you were doing an 18. It was graded 20 for decades, then briefly downgraded to 18 by a couple of guys who had probably done it 20 times. Now, the consensus seems to have settled at 19.