Malta to Siracusa

Well we promised a rapid addition to the blog, so here it is, all about Malta to Siracusa, where we are now, getting ready to depart for a 2 day sail to Crotone, which is on the ball of the foot in Southern Italy.

After a peaceful night on anchor in Mellellia Bay on Malta, we sailed down the east coast of Malta to arrive in Valletta. Wow, what a fantastic entrance to the Harbour. I will let the photos do the talking!

Malta & its Capital, Valletta

We then spent the day sorting out the odd jobs required on the boat and got chatting to an English couple who recommended a fabulous curry house about 5 minutes walk from us, so that evening I was donned in a white shirt, black (thankfully) linen trousers and a pair of new white sandals (not so thankfully) made my way with David of course to the Curry House, where we had a great curry (clearly we do miss these!) However 2 minutes after leaving the restaurant I felt something very strange going in my sandals, and looked down to see what I immediately thought was dog poo squelching around my toes, worse still I had managed to rub it all over the back of my trousers (below the knee obviously) when I crossed my legs under the table. Great! On my attempts to clean it up however it became apparent that it wasn’t dog poo but curry sauce, which thankfully but surprisingly did clean off without a stain, although I am not sure that would have been the case had I been wearing white linen trousers!

Wednesday (11^th) arrived bringing with it my sister Tina and her husband Martyn and a new addition to the travellers on board Seclusion.

Now for those of you who don’t know the story, Danie , Andrew and I found out we had another sister in November last year. To cut a long story short, before Dad met Mum, he was going out with who we now know is Tina’s mum, but he was in the RAF and just before he was posted overseas, she fell pregnant. Without being able to communicate with Dad, and as  back in those days single motherhood being not the done thing, she was forced to give her baby up for adoption. It is obviously a bit more complicated than that, but for the purposes of this blog, you are all now on the page.

Anyway whilst I had met Tina, I had not met Martyn before and David hadn’t met either of them. If I had worried about us all getting long for 5 days in about 12 x 4 metres of space, I needn’t have!. When they arrived with 2 bottles of Champagne and 2 bottles of gin and were asked if they wanted a drink, (meaning Tea or coffee as it was 11 am CET at the time), Martyn piped up with a beer please, Tina asked for a white wine on the basis that it was 12 o’clock for them, until we pointed out that it was actually 10 o’clock for  them, we knew we were all going to get along just fine. David soon got to grips how alike Tina and I are, need I say more!. Anyway from that moment onwards we got on famously, with lots of chatting, laughter, and so on. Indeed we didn’t even venture off the boat that day, just talked till we were hoarse.

Thursday morning brought about a wee discussion on sleeping arrangements as poor Tina had had a rather rough night what with the heat in the cabin and Martyn’s snoring. David kindly offered to give up his cabin for her (normally I am in the bow but because the bed is too short up there, David takes one of the aft cabins which I hate because of the ceiling height and the feeling of claustrophobia). That all sorted, we also decided we couldn’t just stay in the Marina so had a lovely, albeit longer than expected, sail back up to Mellellia Bay. Longer because we were diverted 6 miles away from the coast as the Maltese Army were practising their shooting out to sea! We dropped anchor and had a lovely afternoon. Martyn even braved the water and dived straight in, perhaps with a little encouraging lie as to the temperature of the water, needless to say he was on his own!  The evening carried on with more wine and food flowing and a game of Euchre! (Cards before you ask, where you had to get into pairs and play as Teams). Entirely new to David and I, but with the wine helping we picked it up in no time and the girls took the first round.

Friday we poodled off round the corner to what is meant to be the only patch of Turquoise water in Malta, The Blue Lagoon and dropped anchor…

However the wind was picking up and all the tourist boats zooming in and out made it not such a relaxing enjoyable place so we decided to hop on our way and visit Gozo, the island north of Malta.

The Island of Gozo

Safely tucked in the marina there, we went exploring to Victoria by taxi. We all had a bit of chuckle when he told us his name was Martin, Martyn chipped in as obviously it is his name too, but then David decided to make it a threesome, all at the expense of the poor taxi driver! Victoria was not much to write home about except the citadel which (when the renovations have finished and the dust has settled) will be beautiful.

Having returned to the boat, G&T’s or V&T in my case was happily drunk followed by wine, dinner and Cadburys dairy milk for pudding. The boys then managed to equalise at Euchre, leaving the decider to play on our last night.

The following day we left for Valletta again, Force 5 on the nose and Tina and Martyn learned how frustrating it can be trying to get somewhere with the wind on the nose, having to continuous tack and do twice as many miles as normal! Still it was a great days sailing although not sure Martyn got the gist of letting the lines go completely and pulling in instead of letting go.

On arrival back in Valletta, Tina and David then googled for nice restaurants in Valletta and having chosen one, I promptly called up and booked a table for us all. It was only when I googled the directions that we realised it wasn’t in Valletta at all, but in a town called Mdina in the middle of Malta, about a 30 min cab ride away, David clearly having spent too long in Tunisia believed Mdina was the centre of Valetta as opposed to a town in its own right. Mdina was a great surprise to us, a beautiful old citadel, immaculate and charming, one day we will need to go back in daylight with my camera!. The meal was lovely although not sure we could say the same for the Maltese wine.

Sunday we stayed in Valletta and went walkabout, it is a beautiful old city and a number of different parts to it. The pictures again say it all.

Back to the Old City of Valletta

We had a lovely lunch overlooking Grand Harbour and then clearly with too much wine inside her, Tina decided to pose by a giant teddy bear on the street (she didn’t realise it was a dustbin) and climb through some exercise hoops (at least I think that is what they were) on the pavement, tee hee, so mad! I took photos from the front and let her husband take them from behind, needless to say I don’t have those!

We also had a chuckle at some of the number plates. No prizes for guessing what these belong to…

We finally got back to the boat and spent a lovely evening on board, the boys taking the crown in Euchre and climbed into our pits.

It was very sad to see Tina and Martyn leave on Monday 15th and hopefully we haven’t put them off sailing and they will return one day in the not too distant future. Gone but not forgotten, especially for David, after a Goldliocks moment, realisng that his duvet had a distinct smell of perfume on it !

We ourselves left Valletta on Tuesday and had a lovely sail north back to Marina di Ragusa to pick up our booze and do some washing. Yesterday we then departed for Siracuse, with a  Force 6 blowing us on our way. Quiet night on board and we are now ready to set sail back over to Italy.