Back in Malta - On the Hard
Sounds rude doesn’t it – well it is pretty rude, or maybe crude is a better word for this type of living. Having returned to Malta after living in our friends’ various beautiful homes this is definitely a rude awakening. Yes this is what its like to live on a boat some of the time. Time your toilet use because the walk to the toilet takes about 5 minutes over fairly rough terrain. Don’t wear any decent footwear that you don’t want to have destroyed by said rough terrain. There is garbage all around Moondancer chucked down on the ground by the last boat owners who occupied this space. That just about describes what its like on the hard in Manoel Island Yacht Yard. But its only 70 Euros per week and we really need to get a lot of work done to get Moondancer back to the lovely girl she was 13,000 miles ago.
What is interesting is that its not hot anymore. Within the space of 3 weeks which is how long we were away from here the temperature changed quite a bit. It seems so strange to me to be cold in Malta. Or even to be cold at all. We did experience being cold when back in Canada and England but that was the first time in a year of traveling in permanent Summer. But I have no past experience of Malta in any other season except blistering hot Summer. So this is quite interesting. And very welcome otherwise we would not be able to work on the boat.
So far we’ve pulled the propellor off, pulled the prop shaft out, having had to pull the coupling off the back of the reduction gear box, re-packed the stuffing box aka packing gland,(which we now have to re-do) fixed the bent port track which was pulled out of line while on the wall in Sliema. Today we scraped and sanded the trim on the starboard side and used linseed oil mixed with turps 50/50 as recommended by our New Zealand friend Kiwi, who we met in Pantelleria, as our new finish. Not shiny like Cetol or Varnish, but looks good and we hope will be easier to maintain as the last finish did only last one year. We also have the bottom paint to do and are debating whether to also paint the hull, which really hasn’t faired too well either.
It now looks likely that we will be getting a spot in Msida Marina which is what we had hoped for and then we can start looking for work. Not sure what that’s going to look like yet but we trust that something will come up.
What is interesting is that its not hot anymore. Within the space of 3 weeks which is how long we were away from here the temperature changed quite a bit. It seems so strange to me to be cold in Malta. Or even to be cold at all. We did experience being cold when back in Canada and England but that was the first time in a year of traveling in permanent Summer. But I have no past experience of Malta in any other season except blistering hot Summer. So this is quite interesting. And very welcome otherwise we would not be able to work on the boat.
So far we’ve pulled the propellor off, pulled the prop shaft out, having had to pull the coupling off the back of the reduction gear box, re-packed the stuffing box aka packing gland,(which we now have to re-do) fixed the bent port track which was pulled out of line while on the wall in Sliema. Today we scraped and sanded the trim on the starboard side and used linseed oil mixed with turps 50/50 as recommended by our New Zealand friend Kiwi, who we met in Pantelleria, as our new finish. Not shiny like Cetol or Varnish, but looks good and we hope will be easier to maintain as the last finish did only last one year. We also have the bottom paint to do and are debating whether to also paint the hull, which really hasn’t faired too well either.
It now looks likely that we will be getting a spot in Msida Marina which is what we had hoped for and then we can start looking for work. Not sure what that’s going to look like yet but we trust that something will come up.
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