Thurs., Apr. 12, 2018

Rinella Creek,
Malta

Milly had been moored on a ball in Sliema Creek for the month plus that we have been in Malta.  We had picked it up when we arrived after the advice of a Maltese cruising friend of ours who gave us the secret and highly valuable directions to the balls.  Well, today the officious officials came by at 6:00 p.m. to kick us off.  There is a big storm coming in on Saturday in the direction that is wide open to Sliema Creek.  The bay gets enormous waves that strain and break the lines.  We were surrounded by very large, steel tourist boats.  I'm sure the officials are clearing out as many boats as possible.

We are now anchored in a delightful small bay on the south side of Valletta.  It seems exceptionally sheltered but, as our Maltese friend has warned, if we needed to get out during the storm the channel entrance to the Grand Harbour would be impossibly dangerous.  So we are headed south this a.m. before the wind starts to build this afternoon, to a lovely fishing harbour called Marsaxlokk, that is protected from the east.  Our Maltese source is there in his boat - he should know.

The winds are building over Saturday with the highest at night, in the dark, of course.  It's not the wind as much as the waves that concern sailors and Malta is surrounded by very lengthy fetch on all sides!  It will be good to be in a snug fishing harbour.

Wed., Apr. 11, 2018

Sliema Creek
Malta

The Sahara can't let us go!  Poor Milly's deck, windscreen, anything open to the sky essentially, were covered with a not so thin layer of fine red Sahara sand.  Whenever the wind blows from anywhere in the sun the sky is hazy and with rain, even a few sprinkles as happened last night, the dust settles.

Our white sunbrella is now "Sahara tan".  The sand covers everything but gathers at wind blocks like tiny snow drifts.

On Milly's white decks and white or pale grey canvas the results are discouraging.  The majority can be swept off when the deck is dry but to get the fine film that discolours and clings to feet, a good soapy swabbing of the decks and scrubbing of everything else is required.  The non-skid rough surface of the deck is essential in rolling seas but the dust settles around every little protrusion.

The transom gathers all the sand that blows down the length of the boat.  It's the worst and is where we step everyday.

We are a barefoot boat but with Sahara sand, shoes are required.  

The rub is that whenever the conditions are right it happens again.  And apparently, the skies of Italy, Greece and Turkey all suffer from the same phenomenon.  Ah well, one of the pitfalls of sailing "beside" the biggest, - and reddest? - desert in the world.

Sat., Apr. 7, 2018

Sleima Creek
Malta

Today we dinghied around the Valletta point to Grand Harbour to watch The Freedom Day Regatta - celebrating the withdrawal of British military and navy in 1979.  The highlight of the day is a paddling regatta of traditional Maltese boats from the local town clubs.  A colourful event with crowds doing more carousing than watching.  Fun to watch, from TomTom rafted to our friends dinghy.

These traditional boats- Maltese gondolas- with motor are used to taxi tourists back and forth across the harbour.

Lovely boats, cared for with pride by the all male rowers.  Didn't see one female.

This rowing pair with little boy coxswain were the winners of their race after rowing in three previous races.

Maltese are serious boaters. It's obvious from their choices of park art.

Memorial for child refugees at Pinto Wharf.

And then there are the boats that bring in the big bucks...and the crowds.

Friday, April 6, 2018 - Knights of St. John

Sliema Creek
Malta

For an island that is 27 km long by 16 km wide, Malta is packed with history. The Greeks, Romans, Turks, Corsairs, Spanish, French and British have all either invaded or laid claim here mainly because of it's handy proximity between Europe and North Africa. The land itself, a big rock with very little topsoil on which to grow crops, and, we hear, scorching summer temperatures, which we have seen nothing of, and very little fresh water was certainly not the enticement.

The Grand Master's of the Knights palace.  Considering they agreed to poverty, they sure built and lived in lovely, huge places.

The Auberge de Castille that housed the group of knights from that area.  Not bad!

The courtyard of the Grand Master's Palace.

One of the more exciting and desperate stories was the Great Siege of 1565 when the Knights of St. John held off the Turks by the skin of their teeth.  Valletta, the capitol is full of plaques identifying  some beautiful auberges for the different langues of knights who were categorized according to the country they were from.  Here in Sliema Creek we are surrounded by forts, towers and walls built by the Knights of St. John either in preparation for the siege attack or afterward to prevent such hardship in later anticipated attacks.

From Fort Manoel to Valletta and Fort Elmo.

The chapel at Fort Manoel was almost completely destroyed by bombs in WWII.  It was the first of the site to be lovingly restored.

The Knights of St. John were originally hospitaliers.  We went to a great museum in a series of tunnels and rooms that housed an original hospital.  This building, beside Fort Manoel was a 18th C hospital for victims of the plague and other epidemics.

Built after the siege as a fort and a hospital, we look at Fort Manoel from our mooring.  Napoleon's navy defeated it in short order.  It WWII it was used as a submarine base and was bombed heavily.  It is being restored currently.

These huge elevated stone tops cap enormous caverns used to store grain during the siege.

The grounds are littered with them.  Hard to imagine the planning that went into surviving the siege.

Peter and I both read The Great Siege, Malta 1565 by Ernle Bradford, a rollicking and gruesome page-turner that reads like fiction and develops the character and setting in a way that has made the island come alive for us.  We have explored forts, walked the ramparts and placed the Turks and Knights on hilltops and towns.  It makes me appreciate again what a wonderful education travelling can be!

Fort Rinella guarding one side of the Grand Harbour.  The harbour had three forts surrounding it at the time of the siege.

Wed., Apr 4, 2018 - Hiking in Malta

Malta

We have cruising friends met in Tunisia here and enjoy their company on many explorations.

Even though Malta is reported to be the country with the second densest population in the world after Bangladesh, there are isolated places to walk in the countryside.  Mind you, because there is little natural growth over thigh height, over the next terraced ridge or hill, a town, sometimes two, of decent size dominated by a huge church can be seen in the distance.  Fields at this time of year are green and patchworked by stone walls.  Wild flowers abound.  And the very blue sea is always within view.  The water along the rocky shore is every shade of blue imaginable with the bottom easily viewed from high above. The coast line is rock and cliffs - really the island is just one huge limestone rock.  There are only two beaches of any size in Malta - one 1 km long and a second 0.5 km long.  This is not the place to come for a beach holiday but it has nearly everything else.

Plenty of surprises around every corner.  These are Roman? salt pans, we think.  

Tiny Malta is chock full of history.  Forts, towers, walls mainly from the 300 years when the Knights of St. John dominated the scene.  

We reached the tallest part of the island, the Dingly Cliffs, at 600 feet.  Not a high island but beautiful views, nonetheless.

Gozo in the background and Camino mid ground are two other Maltese islands in this very blue surround.

One of the very few beaches, named Paradise Bay for good reason.

Monday, April 2, 2018

Marsaxlokk
Malta

The Maltese language is a Semitic language along with Arabic, Hebrew and Amharic.  It's thought to be a descendant of the language spoken by Phoenicians. To the ear, it has some of the guttural harsher Arabic sounds. It is the only Semitic language written in Latin script which makes it a bit easier to follow road signs then in Tunisia.  There are few odd accents and many x's pronounced as a harsher "sh".  Luckily for us, English is another official language making communication easy.  

One of our hiking destinations took us to the fishing town of Marsaxlokk.  The large harbour was packed with small, traditional, brightly painted and well-tended, wooden fishing boats.  On the bow are the "Eyes of Osiris" to ward of evil spirits.  

Now, the meaning of these eyes, believed to be good luck, is confusing.  Osiris was the Egyptian god of death and the underworld.  So having a good luck charm on a boat in his honour seems odd.  But research is also conflicting.  According to one author, it should be called the Eye of Huros as it is in many eastern Med countries.  Huros, the son of Osiris, fought with his brother Seth or maybe with his father Osiris.  In any case, Huros got his eye poked out in the fight. When his mother, the goddess Isis, saw this, she picked up the eye and put it back in place on Huros.  She declared that whoever is behind the eye will have her protection.  A little more sense for a small, rowed fishing boat.

Another version: According to an old Maltese fisherman who "claimed that the primary function of the eyes is to scare-off and intimidate great-white sharks - are they even in the Med? another google search required - contemplating surfacing beneath the boat to overturn it!  According to this particular explanation, nothing scares a lumbering great-white more than a pair of eyes peering hypnotically and nonchalantly at it from above!"  Yikes!

Whatever the lore, seems like a good accessory for Milly.  I'm on the hunt for one.

Sunday, April 1, 2018 - Easter

Sliema Creek
Malta

Easter in capital R., capital C., Malta is an all out affair! For two people who feel most spiritual in the hands of Mother Nature, Maltese Easter was a weird and wonderful event.  It started a week before Easter Sunday, “Holy Week”  and ended at sundown on Easter Sunday (Easter Monday is not celebrated here), rung in and out with peeling church bells.  

From dusk on Maundy Thursday to about midday on Good Friday, the Maltese go on a pilgrimage through seven churches to view religious art that is draped in black cloth.  Black cloth decorated with ornate gold symbols were hanging on many doorways and balcony railings.

This lovely chapel, probably the simplest in Malta, is perched on a cliff overlooking a green plateau and the lower blue sea.  Inside it was decorated for Easter with tables set up along the walls.  On each was a doll-house size  setting of an event during the last week of Christ's life.  On the altar were flat, very decorated pie-like offerings.  Another Holy Week tradition. 

At dusk on Good Friday, after a mass, many of the villages put on an equivalent of a funeral procession - very serious and solemn.  The many children in the procession we viewed in Valletta didn’t crack a smile and the crowds watching were quiet and hushed.  The marching bands played funeral marches. The float equivalents were plaster figures, many hundreds of years old, depicting biblical characters and ended with Christ hauling the cross and then the crucified Christ.  Eight men carried these floats - the figures were on platforms supported by four rafters/poles - four in the front and four in the back, in a strange coordinated wide-stepped walk, making the figure above them sway and bounce.  We were told by a local woman that these dedicated men had calluses on their shoulders from carrying these heavy figures.  Every so often the procession stopped to give the men a breather, resting the rafters on forked wooden poles.  Between the floats children and men in costume carried all kinds of symbolic accessories.  Many of the men had extravagant costumes of Roman soldiers.  It was quite a sight.

A poor example of the black cloths hanging from windows in mourning.

Apparently, on Saturday the churches are darkened.  After an evening mass, the lights are slowly, at first, turned back on and then more quickly ending with every bulb in the church turned on symbolizing the resurection.

We attempted to view the Easter Sunday procession which reportedly involved men running with the figure of Christ in a more joyous celebration of his rising.  However, we missed it. 

There are lots of special foods to eat - cakes, cookies, savoury pastries, breads.  What we tried was yummy.  And Easter Day dinner of lamb is shared by family.

We did not partake in very much but witnessed from afar the passion that many demonstrated over the several day period.  From a guy working in a chandlery to a restaurant owner to a woman sitting beside us, they were happy to describe their traditions, their excitement growing as they sensed our respectful, bewildered interest. Ninety-eight per cent of the Maltese population identifies as Catholic.  We were lucky to be here to see them celebrate their most important holiday of the year.

I celebrated by picking myself a big bouquet of wildflowers - the first bouquet that Milly has had - in a vase of great family memories! 

My Easter.