Almost a month later - its amazing how time has flown by. And we still have not really done much sight seeing in Malta. Our Christmas was really nice - some of it spent with my Maltese family, some with our Msida Liveaboard friends, and Christmas Day alone just as we wanted it. Opening presents which we pretended to be surprised at (though mostly we bought things for each other that we jointly need). I cooked a traditional Christmas dinner of Turkey, stuffing etc. etc., we ate whatever we wanted all day, chocolates and cookies, etc. etc. etc. A group of our Msida Liveaboard friends (who from now on will be referred to as MLF's) crashed our cosy little nest at about 8.00pm, just when I was trying to get through to my children on skype, which was neat. Johnny and Josie got to see some of them, and hear our raucous carol singing. Attached is a bit of video showing us trying to sing along with Abba. Our friends Phil and Wendy took us in their car to Gozo to a village whose name I can't remember, where they created 'Bethlehem', a live creche/crib around which they built a village as we could imagine Bethlehem would be. The carpenters and bakers and the holy family were all played by Maltese people who were very convincing as the Maltese look alot like the jewish people of that day would. It was very well done. Its nice to include some of the historic reality of Christmas in with the material festivities. New Year's eve we spent at the Royal Malta Yacht Club. It was a very good party, about 200 people, all really up for the event. The Club served gallons of champagne and hor'doevres all night. The music was great, we danced until we dropped, and fortunately did not drink ourselves into comas, just merry all night. As it should be. The next day we had to start all over again being Tony's birthday, so champagne for breakfast and as the weather was gorgeous the MLF's had a big group for a New Year's Day BBQ. Tony had a good time at 'his' birthday party, and by early evening when it started to cool down we were happy to retire to our own home again, putting another festive season to bed.
And that's exactly what we have done - we've made a commitment to take our Royal Yachting Association Yachtmaster Offshore exam the first week of February, and now that we actually have the syllabus and are working through it we know what we have let ourselves in for. We study every day, almost all day, and now that some days the weather is quite nasty we don't mind being inside working away. We do hope that it won't be too nasty when the examiner arrives and we have to prove our sailing skills/boat handling. Like many sailors, we use electronic navigation and have done almost ever since we started sailing. For myself, ever since I have sailed my own boat I have used GPS for all navigation. What a shame we did not keep using what we learned when we first started, because it is very hard going now to re-learn it. We have also started a first aid course (4 sessions over the next 2 weeks) and next Monday we do a 1 day Sea Survival course, these things we need as a Commercial Endorsement to our RYA qualification The reason we want these qualifications is that we intend to find work sailing/managing/skippering other people's boats. We have been looking at many jobs (and there is lots of work in this industry), and have registered with a few agencies who place people like us, and we have been told that we need this certification for insurance reasons. So we are confident that when we get our 'ticket' we'll find what we need to keep us going financially for the next few years, wherever that will be.
And that's exactly what we have done - we've made a commitment to take our Royal Yachting Association Yachtmaster Offshore exam the first week of February, and now that we actually have the syllabus and are working through it we know what we have let ourselves in for. We study every day, almost all day, and now that some days the weather is quite nasty we don't mind being inside working away. We do hope that it won't be too nasty when the examiner arrives and we have to prove our sailing skills/boat handling. Like many sailors, we use electronic navigation and have done almost ever since we started sailing. For myself, ever since I have sailed my own boat I have used GPS for all navigation. What a shame we did not keep using what we learned when we first started, because it is very hard going now to re-learn it. We have also started a first aid course (4 sessions over the next 2 weeks) and next Monday we do a 1 day Sea Survival course, these things we need as a Commercial Endorsement to our RYA qualification The reason we want these qualifications is that we intend to find work sailing/managing/skippering other people's boats. We have been looking at many jobs (and there is lots of work in this industry), and have registered with a few agencies who place people like us, and we have been told that we need this certification for insurance reasons. So we are confident that when we get our 'ticket' we'll find what we need to keep us going financially for the next few years, wherever that will be.
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