Team Polar Bear on Temporary Hiatus

Team Polar Bear continues to be on hiatus, but only for a few more days. We had originally intended to reunite on May 28th. Then June 1st. Then June 8th. Now it is June 10th... set in stone.

So, continuing our saga from where I last left off....

I left Simon in Wales to head back to California to handle some nagging business. (I sold my car just in time for $4 per gallon gas prices. I've got wind power now! Haha, suckers!)

Simon returned to the boat to get it into the water and down to Portsmouth. After several days of work, he finally managed to get it hauled into the water, only to find out that the engine wouldn't start. The starter motor had to be replaced. Rats.

A few days later, he was finally on the high seas! But the engine has a strange knock. After a few days, the knocking got worse and Simon shut it down. Unfortunately, it was 4 am and the tide was against him, bringing him straight to some rocks; the water was too deep to anchor, and there wasn't enough wind to give the beasty boat any power.

Despite the knocking, Simon tried turning on the engine again, but it wouldn't start at all. With no other choice, he called for help and was towed to a mooring buoy up a river in nearby Falmouth. (I can assure you that towing a 13 ton boat in the middle of the night is not a cheap proposition.)

The next day, we spent several hours on the phone together trying to troubleshoot the engine. We were in no position to do it, however, without much experience taking apart and re-building diesel engines. I had bought a book on marine diesels, but it hadn't arrived yet. Plus, I was in California and Simon was stuck on the boat (we don't have a dinghy yet) in Falmouth. We moved to Plan B and paid an engineer to fix it.

The engineer said he would need at least a week, so Simon packed up to go work in Portsmouth. A few days later, the engineer said he needed more time. Simultaneously, Simon was offered work for two weeks in Lanzarote, Spain (the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa). We decided he should take it while the boat was in the shop. Team Polar Bear's rendezvous was rescheduled for June 1.

In the meantime, I've been going crazy at home. I am renting out my condo, which means I have to move the rest of my stuff out of it. I've packed up stuff that I'm taking with me to the yacht, but it is too much to carry. The rest was going to various storage spaces. I no longer have my car, so I've been renting/borrowing/walking. The logistics began to make me a little nutty, so I decided I needed more time. To be frank, though, as much as I love San Diego, my house, my family and my friends, I cannot wait to get back. I'm tired of running in fifty directions and I look forward to completing my tasks here so I can focus on my business and Polar Bear full time.

Good news, though. Polar Bear is all fixed up. The engine problems turned out to be loose parts, resulting in another small part becoming bent and jamming the whole thing. This was the best case scenario, and also what Simon and I thought might be the issue due to improper winterizing, so we are pleased with that. Simon is currently working again in Portsmouth, but on June 10, we are getting back on track. We have a fun itinerary planned of batting around the West country for about a week before returning to Portsmouth.

So, yes, things are a bit boring right now while we continue in this slow phase of gearing up for extreme nomadism. We're impatient to get going, of course, but at least things are moving along in the right direction.