Our new neighbourhood - Lazaretto Creek

But not very far - just out of the marina. BUT - just out of the marina is so very nice. Now we have a little breeze blowing through the boat, the water is clean enough to swim in, not as clean as a bit further out into Marsamxett Harbour, but really doable. We have come around the corner of Msida Creek into Lazaretto Creek, as you see from the pictures we are in pretty good company. We are flanked by Ta'Xbiex 'wall' where there are many very large expensive yachts, and Manoel Island where again the super yachts tie to the wall of Manoel Island. We are on a mooring which we are told is available until September.
Who knows - we could just as easily be moved off here tomorrow. As I've said before there is a real problem with moorage availability in Malta. Its a very small country and everybody wants to pass through, which means the marinas have to keep some guest moorage available. That is where we have been for the past couple of months - on the guest moorage dock, so we were asked to leave, and quite honestly I hated being in there - so hot and smelly from all of the poor stray cats, and then being moored too close to our neighbours. I like neighbours alot more when I can keep them at bay - or arms length or at least boat width - that was not the case, we were packed in like sardines. Now we are on a mooring close to the channel, lots of boats pass us and make big wakes and we roll around alot, but I really like the change.
Tony is working on a charter this week which will keep him away until Thursday - overnight aswell, and I'm on my tod looking after the boat. Cleaning the hull was the first job, having been squeezed in between other boats for a couple of months with dirty fenders had made the hull filthy - now it looks almost as good as when we re-painted it last November. Can't use fresh water to wash it off though, now we have to ration water until we get back into a marina to fill up our tanks. Salt water works for scrubbing though, alot better than nothing.
So this is a bit like when we were on our way - we are now relying on solar panels and engine to power our fridge and lights, and we have to be careful with water.
Next week we have 6 days without being booked so we are going to have a holiday. We'll take Moondancer into some of the beautiful anchorages around Malta and enjoy them just for ourselves. We are really looking forward to the break from our daily routine.
So what about the World Cup - yesterday afternoon we rushed from place to place trying to find somewhere that was showing the game. We found a place alright - but it was the wrong place. We arrived at the beginning of the second half. The score was 2 - 1 to Germany. England had scored the second goal which was disallowed. When Germany scored their third goal the whole sports bar we were in errupted with glee - Oh oh, we're in the wrong bar, it got even worse when they scored again. There were quite alot of England supporters skulking out of bars before the end of the game - including us - it was just too painful to watch anymore. Poor England. I had this silly notion that because I was here in Malta when England beat Germany in 1966 that I would bring good luck to the team and it would happen again - NOT - sometimes silly notions are premonitions of fact - not that time.