With the promise of Indian food, we set off for Malta. It is amazing to me how the tantalizing carrot changes form. Never had I, nor any of our Madame Geneva crew, set foot in Malta but we felt certain we could locate a non-Italian restaurant within the former British territory. Not to worry: our retirement from pizza, grilled vegetables and vongole has been short-lived; the thrill is back. What we knew of Malta was little. There was the lore of catapulting severed heads across the bay and the shoving of bodies on crosses in retaliation, but really it was a less studied and more instinctive knowledge that drove our desire to leave the seas of Sicily and dip into the hot, almost African waters.
We announced our arrival, not in a “We come this way from Messina!” fashion but more of a “don’t get mistaken for a refugee boat” kind of way. 10 kilometers out we radioed the Coast Guard advising of our status and intent, and again at 1 kilometer out. Given permission to enter the harbor, after Justin and I said “Marsamxett” about fifty times to one another without the finger on the VHF before Justin confidently spoke the name of bay we were approaching to the port police, we motored past the huge sandstone walls of the fort and old city of Valetta. We arranged space at the marina just past the navy station, at the foot of the hill ascending to the gated and fortified city.
Bravely, we set out in search of our promised dinner. Novices, we walked. The heat baked through our shoes and soaked our shirts. The kids deteriorated and turned on each other. Water was drained. The path along the harbor was deceptive and followed unforeseen fingers deep into the ‘new’ city with stores boarded up. And that was only a mile walk. We found a pub to regroup. Cooled down with Sprites and the tiniest of gin and tonics, we searched on Google Maps and found a restaurant along the bus route. We were all growing up: we could now say Marsamxett AND we knew to take the bus everywhere.
We used our days dockside to take care of boat projects, including fixing the battery charger and water heater. In the afternoons, we had late lunches and explored the history of Malta. Very few times do I feel like we are nailing homeschooling. Most of the time, I fret over all the things I neglected to teach them. I remind myself (or more likely, Justin reminds me) that the experiences and exposure alone are the greatest education. But then, there are times that I feel the universe slides into home (and in a non-apocalyptic way). As we journeyed into Sardinia and Sicily, I focused their WWII history lessons on the Mediterranean. They watched a documentary that included Malta’s involvement. How cool to take tours of the old map rooms, infirmaries, and forts where the stories told were echoes of what they had already learned! Truly, homeschool, check!
Valetta was fully adorned for their film festival. Red and gold tapestries hung between the buildings that stretched dramatically up and down the steep stoned streets. Slippery sidewalks were carved into pocked steps as the declines and inclines sharpened. Pedestrian bridges stood high over courtyards and alleys. Red carpets were rolled out from the outdoor theatre and down stairs high above one of the many Roman Catholic churches. Café tables and umbrellas, decorating the centers of streets, did not deter the working cars or trucks moving through the town. One evening, in search of a perch over the Grand Harbor to hear what we could of the Queen tribute band, we instead stumbled into a four-piece jazz band playing on a bridge while crowds of people sat where they could to hear. The stairs leading down to the bridge, the café tables, and the thick stone railings were all filled. The notes danced along the narrow pathways. All roads lead to jazz.
We cruised up to St. Julian’s Bay, a few miles to the north. Barely were we out of the harbor before we turned into the bay. We found a nice spot outside of the chaos. Anchorage is allowed just outside of the local boat moorings. Boy do these people know how to take a permission and exploit it! The sea and wind, so settled, we had no concerns with the anchor at only 3 times the depth. We then proceeded to watch as yachts motored at 7 kts into the bay, drop anchor while in forward, slam into reverse and leave their boats. Swinging and dragging, no one seemed particularly fazed. We were fascinated and determined to cancel our plans to go to the film festival (lest we leave our boat unattended). Instead, we had a lovely Greek dinner and found the greatest supermarket. Ahhh, provisions!
Fully loaded, we left the festive St. Julian’s for Gozo, still a part of Malta but its own island. Cliffs, caves, and waters so many shades of blue surrounded Madame Geneva. I dropped my most perfect anchor, in a narrow patch of sand. Dug in, we dove in. The many worlds we lived in during those few days seem quite unimaginable. We were one of two sailboats. We were swinging with and almost into five aggressively vacationing tour boats. We avoided swimming into jet skis, inflatable rafts, speed boats, chartered boats, double decker cruise ships for a few hours and then in still silence we watched the light play over the fair and gentle sea lapping at the craggy edges of the tall caves and deep coves. We ate well and we slept well. Kayaks were inflated and the kids explored on their own. More so than anywhere I can remember on this trip, we had a vacation, a respite.
Malta, it seems, is what you make it. Choose your journey. Or choose them all.
Much love and stay tuned.
We took a bus to town to go find something to do. This is not any town. The entrance is one sight to behold. A long bridge with high walls guard the entrance. On the end of the wall there are large spikes rising from each side. In front of the entrance was a fountain that had three huge figures holding up a big bronze bowl that was pouring water in the next level of the fountain. A bonus feature was the space between the fountain and the entrance. It was slippery from all the people that have come and gone, so we had the ability to slide on the ground while running. The first thing we saw when we entered the city was two giant modern buildings. If you look right and left when you first enter, there are stair cases rising to the wall so you could look over. In front of the right modern building is a huge theater. A
It was 500 feet long and really tall. We found out it was a infirmary. We found out that is was a place were all the sick would go. The person giving us the tour, told us that it was a place for the sick, injured and the people at death’s door. But it was all for men. Yep, a whole big room with a heap of sweaty, sick, even people who are almost dead. If there was an arm or a leg that needed to be cut off there was a doctor for that. The first way to remove the arm was a saw. It usually took 5 whole minutes of sawing. Then someone found out that you could use a guillotine. The guillotine way could do it in a few seconds. On each side of the wall there was a glass dome,That was used for the restroom. People would have to go into quarantine for forty days. If anyone tried to leave they would be killed. The reason for that is because if you carried a bug or sickness then if the people just go onto the main land then a lot of good health people would get sick. They would kill you because one life is better than a lot of lives. We left the room and made our way down some steps, into a underground theater, which we were told was once a garden.
We woke up today and had breakfast, and you know, did the kind of stuff that you do in the morning. Mom eventually managed to get us to get up and go out into the town. We were currently at a marina, so the town was right next to us. We walked to a cafe, and had a drink. After the drinks, we walked to The War Rooms of Malta. It was a long walk from where we were. We walked for about forty minutes, then went in this long tunnel and turned into a room, before the tunnel ended. The room had a lady that gave tickets to us for like seven euro or whatever, anyways we got tickets, but the tour had started so we had missed ten minutes (which was only one room). We caught up to the tour and saw the rest of the rooms. The first room we saw was one with a big chart (that’s a map with a sea on it) table in the middle. The room itself was about four meters long, so not to big, and it had an old fashioned plane board thing on the wall that would tell what planes they would send out. Then, after the guide talked about the planning here in World War II, we finally went to the next room. We looked at the stuff in the room, but I can’t remember many details of it. The guy talked in that room too, it had a fake ID on the table and a chart on the wall and the guy talked about operation Mincemeat. After the tour, because we got there late, we were aloud to explore the place, so we did. We saw the first room that we didn’t get to see, and a room with Nazi bomber uniforms. After that, we looked at metal models of the war planes/bombers. At the gift shop, Gherty and Che got pencil sharpener catapults (even though they are pencil sharpeners they still shoot stuff), and I got a mini snakes and ladders game. We then went to a cafe and got drinks. After that, we got back to the boat. Well, that was pretty much the highlight of the day! Finished. Bye! Stay tuned!
We hustled around the boat getting ready to see the Greek play, Le Troiane. We had been to the Greek theater before with the Ruggieri family, but not to see a play. Anyways, this time we were going there to see the play Le Troiane. We didn’t know if we could do it because we had not bought tickets beforehand. We got in the car for the ten-minute ride to Greek Theater. There was not much traffic on the ride there, so that was good. We got in a long line to get tickets, thankfully when we looked at people’s hands, not all of them had tickets. We got to the front of the line in ten to fifteen minutes, and thankfully got our tickets. We walked to the bookshop and bought three audio guides for Gherty, Che, and I. We were going to the theater to watch La Troiane when Mom spotted some cushions. She got some for us all. We went to our sector (S) and sat down. The play started! The play was cool, it had all sorts of stuff. The whole thing was amazing with lots of screaming and despair. A boy died at the end. (Ick). Well, anyhow it was a good play!
So let me just start by saying exploding volcanoes are awesome! So we were at Taormina and not to far from our boat was a volcano called Etna. And Dad was sitting in the cockpit and suddenly looked over and saw red clouds coming from Etna. He called us out and we started seeing a line of lava coming down. Quickly Mom and I ran to get our cameras. But for some reason mine wasn’t working (I think it was almost dead) but Mom took some amazing pictures on hers. It was very hard to take good pictures on her camera but we got some pretty good ones and some great ones.
The next night was the same except much longer and in the morning it actually snowed. Can you believe it, steaming hot lava in the night and snow in the morning!? Thankfully as far as we know it didn’t go down far enough to reach the town. Also right before all this excitement happened we were up there with our friends! We called them because they weren’t with us and they watched it to. It was so exciting and black clouds above it made shapes while we were watching.
I keep waiting for Ed Harris to introduce himself. For Madame Geneva to sail to the edge of the world and peel back the sky and realize that there really was a mind behind the madness, a production of the largest and grandest scale. The church bells are ringing in the nearby town of Taromina, the train rolls poetically down the rails along the coast, and yesterday’s brilliant lava flow has settled. Glowing red clouds have morphed into mystical vaporous fingers in an elegant dance with heaven and earth. This morning, I awoke at dawn to find snow on the mountain.
Timing is everything. Yesterday, we hiked through the lateral craters of Mt. Etna with friends (new and old) and learned of the mountain’s blessings. How her furious and hot rage could be reigned in by prayer and stop short of houses and villages. How she could carve up the landscape and expose glimpses into the core of earth with far reaching tunnels and earthshaking tremors. How her ash enriched the fruits of the land and tantalized the grapes into beautiful wines. At the peak over ten thousand feet above sea level, she flowed. The eruption started days ahead of our arrival. But from where we stood four thousand feet below, in the voluptuous folds, the only evidence of her power, so fierce as to create many lateral craters, we saw the rich black rock of prior years and heard the distant echo of her explosions.
Tired and worn from the long day of exploration, drenched by rain, warmed by sun, immersed in mist, and a bit exhilarated by the altitude, we dinghied back to our mooring at the mouth of the sea cave. The kids played legos while we foraged through cabinets and freezers to prepare a late-night dinner. Our plan was for an early night (read just after dinner) when Justin called excitedly from the cockpit. Red cloud! Explosion! We watched as the lava began to flow. Hours of trying to capture this moment, mindfully and digitally, were spent cuddled with lovies. We tried to focus lenses on a fine red line while rocking in a swaying anchorage. The lava grew long and we wondered where she flowed and whether our hands had grabbed those same rocks ahead of her descent.
We doubled down on the weather, and headed up to Mount Erice 750 meters above sea level. We saw photos of the sunlit expansive seaside view but we had quite a different experience. The kids ran free through the misty gardens and climbed trees until out of sight. Cold and wet we wandered through the tight streets and alleys and into the eerily spiritual Monastery San Salvador and walked along walls and cliffs on the outskirts of the vast park extending from the Castle of Venus (or as Quinn says “Aphrodite, Roman form”). Justin purchased a lovely Italia sweatshirt to fend off the frozen finger chill. Who needs summer?
On Tuesday, we set off for Cefalu. We had promise of a westerly wind and a nice downwind sail but found choppy waves and a defeated sailing point. We dropped the main ahead of the cape and hoped for better conditions on the other side. A day of adverse circumstance had Justin on the second set of spreaders just off of Palermo. The lazy jacks of the main sail snapped and the difficulty of lowering that sail in any kind of weather pushed us to action. Temporary fix in place, we arrived in the gorgeous harbor of Cefalu right at sunset.
The beauty of this bay, nestled in craggy cave-filled rocks, is astounding. Clear calm blue water, albeit chilly (clearly as even the Germans wore clothes upon diving in), invited serenity. We spent the next day eating, shopping and exploring in town. We attempted to enter the gardens and paths of the temple of Diana perched high above the buildings but were informed that it was impermissible with our flip flops. Justin took the kids back to the boat while AKB and I searched for a plunger and provisions (success all around). He set the children loose in the cave (birds not happy and they were retrieved) and then loose on the dinghy. Delighted captain and crew all around.
We motored to Milazzo the next day as to get to a suitable launch for our transit of the Straights of Messina. We were lured into a small (and possibly Gansta) marina after our search of a weedless anchorage was unyielding. We were officially under protection. Our security had a Colt water gun and advised he’d be by the boat at 4 in the morning. We declined that extra service. We walked the promenade and had a farewell dinner with AKB, as her taxi was picking her up dockside at 5 in the morning.
The screeching began just as Justin was furling in the jib. Down below, the protest at the engine room rang high and piercing. We put the engine to neutral. The alternator belt was loose. We adjusted sails and direction and shut off the engine. The current was moving at 6 kts and we were at 8.5 without noticeable wind. The captain worked quickly below and I steered through the whirlpools feeling the tug as the bow begged for delivery into the swirl. And that was a calm, well-timed transit.
Aunt Kelly Baldwin arrived in Santa Teresa di Gallura, well into the evening, long after the crew of Madame Geneva took a hike up into town to grab some lunch. Little did we know how literal that action would be. We sat in the town square, opting for a table outside in the cold wind because there were no seats indoors. I kept a heavy reef on my wine and we all took turns ‘grabbing’ our lunch as it flew from our plates, hands and the table itself. Host stands, table clothes and keg coolers attempted flight in a fury and were reprimandingly escorted back to the restaurants. Later while Justin and I were purchasing a few provisions (ok wine, beer, cheese…it’s Italy!), Che was left to hold my salmon da portare via (as I could not hold said wine, tablecloth, napkin, fend off the swinging umbrella AND a fork) and a gust wind took it from his hands. The box was retrieved. The salmon was not.
On Monday, we headed to a more remote cala. The wind was supposed to kick up again, coming from the west, so we figured Cala Santa Maria with its east facing bay would serve as our protection from the western winds. When we arrived, other boats dotted the anchorage. We chose to drop our anchor, well in the sand between the reefs and rocks, just outside of those already well dug. And then they left. Most cruisers (I suppose) are thrilled to have a bay to themselves. We often fret when we are the solo boat in a harbor, “What does everyone know that we do not?!” We were alone, with only several moored fishing dinghies. The wind came. The swinging began. Take your partner and all that jazz. Not unsurprisingly, Justin and I were up most of the night and had pulled anchor at dawn. The kids (and AKB) slept most of the short journey to Porto Cervo. 
We rounded Capo Testa, the extreme northern cape and dug into the long tight Cala (natural harbor) of Santa Theresa Di’ Gallura. I mean, how can you not press fingers together, shrug your shoulders and wave your arms when saying this? I am unable to “uh-helpa muhselfa”. Sardinia is simply awesome. As I write this bit The wind has returned. We are safely docked with 25-30 knots howling in the Bonafacio Strait just outside the harbor mouth. Towering mountains and the steep chalky cliffs of French Corsica peeking at us from just 7 miles across the frothy sea. Our Swiss neighbor at the dock here says Corsica is beautiful but “the people…..they are unbearable” whilst holding his nose. Hilarious. 