73 - Crossing our wake

In sailing, one of the phrases people often say is that they crossed their wake.  This means that you've completed a loop of some sort. In our case, we completed a loop of the Mediterranean Sea.  As I type this, we're in La Linea de la Conception, Spain just outside of Gibraltar after a 9-day sail.  This is where we started our Mediterranean Sea adventure last year. While we absolutely loved the Med, we've decided to continue our travels and make our way back across the Atlantic to the Caribbean . We mapped out our Mediterranean route (the yellow lines with red dots) from the last 15 months or so and calculated that our travel by boat equals about 4700 nautical miles and included 8 countries.  I think we fell in love with every place we visited and know we have to come back someday.   

To get caught up though, we left Greece and decided to stop in Malta on our way to Tunisia. We had a really spirited sail with pretty strong winds but we enjoyed ourselves.  Our 3 1/2-day sail had us arriving after dark so we stopped for one night in St. Thomas Bay.  The next morning, we moved to a great anchorage outside of the Three Cities and just across the bay from the capital city of Valetta. The local marina allows for dinghies to tie-up at no charge so we took advantage both days we were there.  Valetta is absolutely gorgeous by itself but when you add in the amazing waterfront views everywhere you look, it's a definite must-see city.  The entire "old city" was named a UNESCO World Heritage site 1980 and it's easy to see why.

Next, we decided to hop a city bus to visit the nearby town of Mdina which was formerly the capital of Malta from 800 BC to 1530.  This beautiful walled city believed to have been founded about 8th century BC.  While very small compared to its successor city, it's totally worth a couple of hours to just wander the delightfully narrow and uncrowded streets. 

The next day, we reserved a berth for one night in Grand Harbor Marina located in Birgu (one of the Three Cities of Malta) so that we could better explore that area as well as get the boat rinsed off from our passage from Greece.  We enjoyed the marina and the cities which are easy to explore.  We even took a water taxi over to Valetta for an amazing rabbit (apparently a local specialty) dinner.  It was fun to get dressed up to go out as it's difficult to do if we have to take the dinghy ashore.

Deciding to move on but still waiting for a good weather window, we left the marina and sailed over to grab an anchorage spot in Malta's famous and aptly named Blue Lagoon.  This beautiful bay area was located just about 14 miles from Valletta but seemed to be in another world - at least at night and first thing in the morning when we had it all to ourselves.   Between the gorgeous blue water which was just warm enough to swim in, the people watching during the day and the solitude at night, I'd say this was one of our all-time favorite anchorages.

While we were anchored outside of Valletta, we went outside late one evening to find that another boat had anchored practically on top of us.  We'd just started our grumbling when the captain, realizing that we spoke English, proceeded to apologize.  Apparently, they had just arrived from Greece and, after dropping their anchor, realized that they were too close to us but were unable to pull the anchor back up due to mechanical issues.  He promised to sleep outside in the cockpit all night to make sure that the boats didn't collide during the night.  I tell you this story because the next morning, we spent quite a bit of time talking to them and they gave us information on the marina they were going to in Monastir, Tunisia.  We'd originally planned to go to another marina in the capital of Tunis but they assured us that they had been to both and Monastir was much better.  So, we decided to take their advice and plotted our course.

Our weather window opened up, so we pulled up our anchor and headed to our first stop in Africa.  We had a mostly great 2-day sail to Tunisia and found both the marina and the city to be perfect.  Our new friends arrived very shortly after we did so we both cleared into the country and headed to the local pub (well only in the immediate vicinity of the marina as we were in a Muslim country) to grab a beer!  As you can expect, this led to introductions to others who've come back to this marina every year or who've never left.  Within just a few hours of arriving, we'd been introduced around the marina and given the grand tour of town.  To top it off, some local cats quickly realized what suckers we are and decided to adopt us while we were there.    In fact, we were told by a friend who tried to return something we'd left on her boat while we were gone, that one of them hissed at her to remind her that it wasn't her boat. All in all, I can't say I've enjoyed any other marina as much.

We thoroughly enjoyed wondering the various streets and traversing the waterfront of our little town.  The local market here was like nothing we'd ever seen before.  There were vendors for everything you could ask for from the huge seafood selection to live animals.  It was fascinatingly crazy with the fish mongers yelling out and the butchers slamming huge knives on chopping blocks and beautiful fruits and vegetables everywhere.  While we loved just walking around the town or it's outskirts, I think we went back to the market at least once (I often went several times) every day we were there mostly just for the experience but we loved the fresh food too.

Originally, we'd only planned to stay a few days but, unsurprisingly, we ended up staying almost 2 weeks between just having fun and getting some work done.  A local upholsterer (whom we quickly learned was wholeheartedly recommended by all of our new friends) approached us to see if we needed any work done.  He promised that he could complete the job in just a few days (thankfully their busy season is over the winter when a lot of boaters wait out the cold weather).  Between his promise of a quick turnaround and the price he quoted us (the Tunisian Dinar was valued at 3 TND to 1 USD so things were very affordable there), we decided to have our tired and worn-out interior cushions all redone.  They not only finished on time and on the quoted price but the quality is fabulous and our boat's interior looks new again.  Plus, we made some wonderful new friends.

At last, the upholstery work was all done and it was time to move on.  We so enjoyed our time in Monastir and wished we'd had more time to explore more of Tunisia.  If they'd had room for us in the marina, we might have considered staying.  But our time was up so we bid adieu to our friends (the customs guys made us leave as soon as we'd checked out of the country so we sadly missed saying good-bye to our sweet cats) and took off. 

Sailing from Tunisia to Gibraltar ended up being about 70% under sail and 30% motoring.  What's funny is that this seemed to be our average for the entire Mediterranean.  As usual, we had some great sailing and some not-so-great motoring days. We apparently were going so slow at one point that the Tunisian Navy radioed us to see why we'd stopped navigating.  After explaining that there was simply very little wind and we didn't want to use up our fuel so early in the trip, they relaxed and left us alone.  Overall, we had really beautiful weather and we even managed to get in one last swim of the season.  Of course, it started out with my diving to get a caught fish trap unstuck from the rudder but the water was still warm and I enjoyed the swim.  We even had a few feathery friends join us for several legs of the trip.

On our 6th morning "Lake Mediterranean" was so calm we again had to crank up the engine to continue on our sail.  Since we were motoring at a nice 6 knots, Pedro decided to deploy the fishing gear and troll for some dinner.  It wasn't 30 minutes into the motoring and fishing that the reel went screaming with the fishing poled doubled over.  In fact, Pedro was concerned he was going to lose all of his line from the reel.  Well, it took about 50 minutes, several U-turns of the boat along with the process of gaining and losing line to bring in the largest tuna caught aboard WSW to date.  This fish ended being about a 50lb blue fin tuna.  And after a few more hours of bleeding and fileting the fish, we've been eating tuna for almost a month (and sharing with boat neighbors) and we've barely dented it.

It took us a couple more days but finally the famed Rock of Gibraltar showed up on the horizon.  We dropped anchor our first night to get some much-needed rest and the next day pulled into the marina in La Linea de la Conception, Spain.  It was a homecoming of sorts as it's the first time we've been back to someplace we'd been before in a long time.  We even met up with some old friends and their new puppy Ben!  We're here for a few days getting some work done and stocking up (mostly on wine and chorizo sausage).  From here we'll continue heading west back across the Atlantic but I'll fill you in on that next time.

Until next post!