The pilot, written three years ago, told us to call Valetta Port Control on channel 9 from 10 miles out and predicts that they will ask us to re-call at 1 mile out. So far, so good – that’s exactly what happened. At one mile out, we called again and were directed to Msida marine (great that’s where we wanted to go) and told to moor on pontoon 0 and clear customs. Just what the pilot says.
So we entered Marsamxett harbour under the bastions of Valetta which is very impressive indeed.
On to the end of the harbour to find that pontoon 0 was full and the marina wasn’t answering VHF. We found a single temporarily vacant private berth on ‘N’, moored and went into the office. The whole marina was completely full and we could only stay an hour or so – go next door to the police for entry facilities.A very nice policeman knew absolutely nothing about entry formalities – apparently customs moved out permanently two weeks ago! We have to go to Valetta but tomorrow morning will do.
So back to the office and they direct us to berth stern to on a concrete quay at Sliema by the harbour mouth which turned out to have a dangerous swell flying along sideways. We spent an uncomfortable night and were unable to get onto teh quay to catch a bus so L & I set off in the dinghy to do the 4 miles round trip into Valetta Grand Harbour by water. We eventually tied up by some fishermen whose float we retrieved and walked another mile right under the bows of two huge cruise liners. We first came to a beautiful marble customs house but it turned out they were the HQ and we had to go where the cruise liner passengers disembark.
The customs people were plainly surprised to see us and had little idea what to do. After a lot of jabbering and phone calls they produced a sheaf of forms to fill in. One of them was a crew list which they asked us to take to the immigration police – who took us right back as they didn’t think they were supposed to do that.
After an hour it was all sorted out. The customs man told us that EU citizens on an EU registered boat with no pets and nothing to declare (like us) really didn’t need to clear in anyway – but it was ‘best’ if we did.
We got back to the boat at 11.30 and we were finally ready to take the ‘Q’ flag down and start our stay in Malta. We all agreed that we couldn’t stay where we were so we called Chris at the marina and he suggested going over to Gozo. We went, which was a really good decision. Mgarr marina is excellent: very sheltered and blow me down has a customs man who could have cleared us with none of the hassle! The pilot states (wrongly) that the customs office closes at the end of September. Well it used to – but now it stays open all year round.
We didn’t even have to pay for mooring - even though we hadn’t yet signed or paid for a winter contract and could have left at any time, they just trusted us and said it would all count as soon as we did sign.
Another sign of the good old-fashioned trust culture was that I took a can to fill with Diesel to the petrol station & told him I would be coming back several times. “No problem“, says he, “Take your time & pay when you’re done”. No two forms of ID, no pay for each one. He just assumed I was honest and would come back and pay in good time. We’ve lost that in Britain over the past 40 years and it’s really great to see it again.
We spent 2 days chilling out, doing a bit of sight-seeing in Victoria and then it was time to get back to Msida so that Hugh and Marion could catch their BA flight back to Gatwick at the ungodly hour of 0500. I called the marina and got lucky. I expected a one-night berth but they gave us one we can stay in until pontoon ’N’ frees up in about 3 weeks. At 3.15 the booked taxi turned up and off they went.
We finally took out our winter contract which cost €1100 for October to April inclusive and water, electricity, showers and toilets are all included in the price. That’s just €50 per week. Fantastic!
We’ve done a little exploring in Malta including seeing the start of the Middle Sea Race run by the Royal Malta Yacht club. No little starting pistol for them – they use a howitzer! The race goes anticlockwise round Sicily then goes down to the tiny island of Lampedusa (the most southerly part of Europe) and back to Malta taking between 3 and 7 days. Some of the 90 yachts are lean mean racing machines but a lot of them are ordinary cruisers with enthusiastic crews. It’s all a bit like a smaller and much more gruelling round the island race.
So that’s it really. We’ve made it and now we settle down to normal life until sometime in April when we set off for Greece. We will do a lot of sightseeing and a fair bit of working and just living but we don’t expect a lot of excitement. I won’t keep up this blog during the winter as I suspect it would be boring to write and even more boring to read. I’ll re-start when we set off again.
Thanks for following us so far – and join us again next year.
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