We enjoyed our time when we wintered Savarna under James Xuereb's watchful eye a few years ago so arrival here was certainly a case of returning to a familiar haunt although this time we were not at the plush upmarket Grand Harbour marina. Manoel Island marina could certainly do with a make over although the security was good and it is better located near chandlers and the restaurant and retail therapy area of Sliema.
The reason for calling into Malta was because we shipped up from New Zealand a new Leisurefurl boom complete with a new, beautiful looking, Doyle stratis main rolled on the mandrel inside the boom. Additionally we knew James from a few years ago and had a lot of confidence in him and his skills to install the new system - and it seemed like we could ship into Malta without a VAT problem.


New mainsail

The ship arrived in Malta in early July so we figured that by the time we arrived on 17th July it would be well cleared through Customs and we could demount the existing batt car system fittings and the gooseneck and install the Leisurefurl system in a week. Well......... it took a further 6 days to clear the shipment through Customs and eventually an articulated truck arrived at the marina with a 7.5 metre long crate on board, a Customs officer, a packing slip that said the whole lot weighed 456 kg's, no hiab hoist on the truck plus the truck driver, James and us. Some 6 hours later, by which time the Customs guy had well gone, satisfied the boom was going on to a foreign flagged vessel, we had the boom on the side deck - a major exercise and will not bore with the details as to how we actually managed this with 3 guys. We can say though that the plan to dispose of the wooden crate parts behind some trees alongside the road was ultimately thwarted when we were discovered by an appearance on the previously unobserved CCTV cameras.


Deliberations with James

Well the arrival of the box was day 1 of a very long, tiring and difficult job - a job that lasted some 10 days, our planned schedule was well and truly blown. Getting the existing gooseneck off was in itself a major, with some 18 bolts to remove - all of which had obviously being installed by Sparcraft with no intention of any future removal. That alone was a couple of days work! Then it was removing the vertical mast sections bolted into the luff grove with 200 bolts up around 26 metres of mast, all from the bosun's chair. On top of this the temperatures were well into the 40's - and then installing the new system. We think the several litres of water consumed every day resulted in a good liver and kidney cleanse.


Installation work continuing

Well we eventually made it and then headed out for a test sail on Friday 3rd August - and on the first hoist managed to destroy the luff grove feeder although we could still use it.
So while in Malta we were able to dinghy around to the Royal Malta Yacht Club so that we could get into air conditioned space. We met Charles and Brenda from San Diego who had recently purchased, Vanquish, a Grand Soleil 46 that they were cruising and racing out of Malta. Charles had an interesting background having worked for the Benetton F1 design team and also more recently working out how to put bombs on drones! They were good company. We also found Godspell at anchor in the harbour, waiting for a spinnaker pole to arrive. We had met Bob and Cindy on the EMYR in 2010 and we had a couple of enjoyable evenings with them before we headed off. As they had spent time in the Caribbean before crossing to the Med we were certainly picking their brains!


Getting close to completion

Sightseeing around Malta was limited as every day was spent working with James on the installation. James and me at the mast, Pam on the winch (electric) as we worked up and down the mast. As the days went by we seemed to get progressively more tired and with the heat it was difficult to get a decent sleep. We eventually solved this problem by buying a big fan that sat in the door to our cabin and went all night! We did manage a Sunday day trip on the "hop on hop off" bus which was a bit if a disaster as eventually we ended up on the wrong bus going the wrong way - but at least we did get to seethe northern part of the island.


Pam at Medina, Malta

Everything closes up at Saturday midday and reopens Monday morning so a bit of planning is required in several on-board departments to ensure we are appropriately stocked with food, alcohol and chandlery bits.
While in Malta it seemed we were destined to be hit with gear breakdowns. The boiler packed up in Malta a few years back and lo and behold it burnt out again this time. After a few days of mucking around with the local Isotherm agents we had a replacement unit flown in from Italy. Then the pressure switch on the watermaker packed up and the local Spectra agents were absolutely useless. Ultimately we had the EUR20 part replaced in Palma.
We had hoped to have a final celebratory dinner with James and his wife however we had close to a 1,000 miles to sail to get over to Cartagena in Spain so we departed for Cagliari at the south end of Sardinia straight after the test sail.


Departing Malta

In the event we motored a few miles up the coast and dropped anchor with a few other boats at a bay called St Pauls, fell in for a swim and then a BBQ dinner and a quiet sleep. The first for nearly 3 weeks as adjoining Manoel Island marina there was a very loud, late touring fun park with VERY loud music well into early hours,
The morning of 5th August saw us heading off under sail for Cagliari some 350 miles to the NW. The track took us close inshore past the island of Gozo and plenty of boats at anchor tucked into small bays for the weekend. As with the passage from the Ionian to Malta a very mixed bag of conditions. Reaching, on the wind, close in past the Agadi Islands off the western end of Sicilly and then arrival into Cagiari, with the Italian flag flying, late afternoon after 55 hours. No wind over 20 knots.
We checked into the marina there and found a pretty decrepit scene - no maintenance here for a few years. Got the fold up bikes out, rode into town and found that public wi-fi in cafes and bars has not arrived in Cagliari. The one local internet café did not have enough bandwidth to connect to a VPN and several hours with Voda and the local telco finally produced a sim card for the Ipad so it was a middle of the night skype board meeting back to Wellington.
Cheers
Keith & Pam