Patrick and Oliver (Grandson) Vella


Robert Zammit and Lois


Debbie and Simon Vella


Us in amazing ruins in Albania


Looking forward to 2009 and hope you you are too.........

HAPPY NEW YEAR – MALTA 7 JANUARY 2009

Happy New Year to you all – trust you had a festive season or are continuing to do so?

We arrived in Malta on the 22^nd of December after nearly a 3 day sail from Corfu. Having waited for approximately 2 weeks for the wind from the North we were not disappointed as after motoring 12 hours the wind kicked in from North and we had a great sail with wind on our starboard beam and quarter! In fact we did not put the main sail up as we were doing between 6.5 knots and 9 knots on a headsail and mizzen with the head sail reefed – overall the wind speed was between 25-40 knots! However I must admit I didn’t feel that comfortable – hopefully it is because I haven’t been to sea for 7 months, if not, I clearly need to ‘toughen up’ as we have a long way to go yet!!!

The seas were rough, however we were reasonably comfortable. It was challenging on our last night when we were meeting traffic heading and coming from the Messina Straits and beyond. Terry and I both ended up on watch all night as the majority of the vessels (much larger than us) did not change course and because we were under sail it was more difficult to alter our course. We were very pleased to arrive in Malta around 8.30am, tie up, and have a good coffee (drinks waited until 6pm)!! We were met by our friend who runs the marina here, Chris, who has kept our berth here since the 10^th of December – we were very grateful given the difficulty of securing a berth at all!

We had a busy few days leading up to Xmas as our refrigeration cooling pump failed en route from Corfu so Terry has to secure another – which he finally manage to do without importing it from England with the help of our friend Robert Zammit!! In addition we were just about out of gas – oh Xmas day without gas – can’t imagine that! And of course obtaining a Malta number – not to mention loading our wine supplies on board which fortunately we had ordered in advance!! We managed to achieve everything in those 3 days – just!!!

It was strange to be leaving Corfu after nearly 3 months in the vicinity – 2 and half of those in the marina. Although we were fairly occupied with our job list we made some great friends and had the appropriate Thanksgiving and Xmas celebrations with turkey dinners etc. We had a little Xmas get together on AC and we all experienced my homemade Xmas pudding and I am delighted to report it was a hit!!

During the last couple of weeks in Corfu we went with some friends over to Albania for the day by private vessel and viewed some excellent ruins in the Butrint National Park which represents Hellenistic buildings of the 4^th century BC to the Ottoman defences created in the 19^th century! What was unique was that most of the buildings are fairly intact, unlike many of the ruins we viewed elsewhere in Greece! We took in the produce markets as well and had a delicious lunch – certainly a highlight of our visit to this area!

It has been wonderful to catch up with our friends we made last winter here in Malta. We went to a party up in Valletta the second night in port at Robert’s restaurant opposite St John’s Cathedral. Valletta was looking so festive with all the decorations – even better than last year!

Xmas day we had friends , the Pullicino family - Joseph, Michelle and their 3 children for brunch which was a very relaxing fun day! We didn’t get around to having our duck etc as they didn’t leave until 6 pm and then another group popped in to wish us Merry Xmas. So we had our Xmas lunch on boxing day – delicious it was too!!

The social gatherings continued; a couple of days after Xmas Simon and Debbie had us at their home along with the Pullicino family! We also met Debbie’s Dad, Patrick holidaying from England and subsequently has been to AC a couple of times – first time on a sail boat – there you go!!!! New Year’s eve was celebrated also with Joseph, Michelle and a few of their friends at their home for dinner. Robert and Antoinette took us to a Pantomime at the Convention centre (Robert is a Director of the Convention Centre) on Sunday evening which was fantastic – a very professional production - we were most impressed – such a highlight! As good as Broadway or the West End.

We have been most fortunate to have so many friends here – they have been so generous and wonderful to us – we will miss them! Of course we are now working hard on persuading all of them to come visit us in NZ!!!

Terry has now fitted the new refrigeration cooling pump and we also had a specialist check the entire system to alleviate any further problems – happy to report he couldn’t find anything amiss!!! So here is hoping as we are going to spend a lot of time at sea in the next couple of months and we need the refrigeration working!!

We are counting down our last days here now! We are watching the weather and it is looking good to leave on Saturday (10^th). (Tomorrow). It is one 1000 miles to Gibraltar and the prevailing wind is West so we will see how we go? We may have to do a bit of tacking. At best it will be 8 days and at worst it may take us a couple of weeks!

This will be leg 2 of our journey home to NZ. We are hoping that all going well we will be in the Caribbean by middle to end of March. Then we will spend a couple of months in the Windward Islands before making our way across to Panama and through the canal. A few days stopover to visit our friends Willie and Mary in Panama and then our journey into the Pacific via Tahiti again. We envisage being back in NZ around mid September.

Once we leave Gibraltar our good friend Murray Aldridge will keep the blog updated regularly to let you know how we are going.

We have a Malta number until tomorrow +35699859941 and then we will be on our UK number +447787793398 which we will keep until the Canary Islands and then relinquish.

Take care and hope 2009 brings you all good health, happiness and prosperity.

Lots of Love

The Jolly Rogers – Homeward bound!