Team Polar Bear is successful in their first mission (even if it took a couple months). Woo hoo! Part I.

Polar Bear is no longer stuck in Wales (or any other crappy corner of the UK -- Simon's words, not mine). She is now safely on the hardstanding in Portsmouth, ready for more refit.

Last Monday and Tuesday, I flew to London from Los Angeles, via Dublin (picking up some whiskey in the jar for Simon along the way). We stopped at the Ailsa pub (which was our local this last winter while camping out in Richmond) for a pint or two, had dinner with Simon's family, then headed to Falmouth by train. The trip was a full day affair, as we hauled over 100 pounds of luggage (no exaggeration) by foot, train and bus. Eventually, we ended up in Falmouth and begged a ride off the tug boat captain, who brought us to Polar Bear.

We were happy to see her, although she looked a bit worse for the wear. In the intervening month, Polar Bear had grown a grass skirt and some mildew and had gained a nasty black gash on the bow. But she was up and running again, so we headed out the next morning. We sailed about twenty miles to the nearby town of Fowey. Fowey was an adorable little town, with old world buildings and narrow streets.

It just so happens that this little trip was my absolute first time sailing with Simon. I think that's a little funny, considering how committed we are to this plan of sailing around the world together. Even worse: I'm pretty much a sailing neophyte. I learned to sail twelve years ago, but have gone only a few times since then, and only for easygoing jollies where I did little of the hard work. I'm pretty much a novice.

I tend to be a bit "deep-endy," as Simon puts it. Liz will confirm, for example, that I went white-water rafting in Chile on the Futaleufu (one of the most challenging rivers in the world), without having ever rafted before or even looking at the trip's website. I just went. After the first day, I feared that I was going to die... but by the second day, I was more comfortable and now I'm all over it.

This sailing excursion wasn't really any different. Here I am, jumping in head first! I wasn't as afraid of dying, but I was nervous about how I would fare with steering, mooring, knot-tying, and staying generally upright and out of the water. I was also worried about annoying the pants off of Simon.

So, I was beating myself up a little when it took me three tries to toss the bow mooring line to the harbor master, who was waiting in a dinghy to tie us to a mooring buoy. "Crap," I thought, "I'm a total gimp just as I feared!" But the next morning, I was surprised at how easily I was able to jump off the boat and pull her close to the town quay before tying her off. My confidence boosted a little.

Later that day, we sailed off to Newton Ferrers, a cute and crowded little marina, up a quiet, shallow river. The weather was beautiful and the wind kind, so I enjoyed the peaceful sway down the coast. Mooring again turned out to be a difficult thing, though, as the only available space was on a floating jetty between two boats, and it was exactly the length of our boat. Simon slid it in brilliantly, and the other yachties all seemed quite impressed. With him, anyway. I got lectured that I wasn't tying up the bow line correctly.

"Twist it that way!" a frustrated onlooker instructed me. "No, no, you're doing it wrong. OK, go back to how you had it before and twist it." After five minutes of this, I shrugged. "Oh, let him do it," the helpful onlooker advised, pointing at Simon. Gimp strikes again, I thought. (When Simon came over, though, it turns out that I was doing the knot he wanted, so I was actually doing it right. Phew!)

We never went into town because the water taxi stops running in the mid-afternoon. Our kind neighbors offered to lend us their dinghy, but we decided to spend the evening watching the sunset on our boat and eating canned steak and kidney pies.

The next morning, our engine wouldn't start. We soon determined that we were out of diesel. (This appears to be a dumb mistake, but in our defense, the fuel injectors are deteriorating rapidly, so we were losing fuel at an unknown rate and we don't have a fuel gauge.) There wasn't a fuel barge anywhere nearby, naturally. We resorted to begging other boats to sell us their emergency supply. After two unsuccessful hours, Simon began muttering to himself that this was a stupid time to quit smoking. I contemplated selling sexual favors. Luckily, I didn't have to as a good Samaritan offered us twenty-five liters at cost. We were off again.

This time we went to Salcombe, which was not on our itinerary, but had a fuel barge. I managed tying up to the tall barge with some trepidation, but successfully. I think I am getting the hang of this.

It turns out that the new harbor master in Salcombe is an old friend of Simon's by the name of Cameron. "Simon!?!" he exclaimed from his dinghy as we motored by, obviously thrilled to see him. The harbor was extremely busy, so he instructed us to moor onto another boat, which was already tied to a buoy. He had several other yachts to contend with, but promised to stop by to catch up later on.

No one was on the other boat to help us moor up, I determined after shouting their boat name during our first drive by. Simon instructed me to take the bow line and, as he pulls alongside the other boat, jump onto it, run to the bow, thread our line through a strong point, pull us close, and tie to the cleat.

Um, yeah.

I positioned myself to jump while pushing visions of horrible accidents out of my head. I could hear Simon complaining that the other boat was swaying around quite a bit, making his approach hard. I ignored him.

The first time we went by, I didn't have the nerve to jump. "You have to tell me if you can't make it," Simon scolded me as we reversed and tried again. I didn't tell him that I could have made it, but just lacked the will to try. I screwed up my courage for the second approach. This time, as we drew close, I threw myself at the other boat and scurried across the deck, while weaving my rope through various impediments. I heard Simon instructing me as I went along, but I was too busy at my task to pay any attention.

Somehow, I managed to make it to the front and got my rope around their cleat. "Good job!" Simon shouted, and he instructed me on how to use the rope to pull the boats together while still using the cleat to bear the load. I tied us securely and opened a bottle of wine. Maybe I am a little less of a gimp than I thought. Rock on.