For the first time, we left Artemis V on the hard for a
whole year, before returning to her.
This was because we had to change the season we sail in, to avoid
hurricanes, as this year we are going to cross the Atlantic
Ocean. Fortuntely we found her in great shape. There followed a week of hectic work,
preparing her for sea. We polished the
hull and deck, serviced all the winches, replaced the anchor wash pump,
repaired the anchor chain counter, set up the bimini etc.etc.etc.
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| Servicing winches |
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| Jobs, jobs and more jobs for Dimitri and Cheeky Tan. |
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| About to enter the water. |
We throught
she was ready, but on launching, we discovered that our batteries had died so
they had to be replaced too. This meant
a two day delay while we waited for the batteries to be delivered from Athens, so we had two
more unexpected, very pleasant taverna meals.
We sailed down the Peloponnisos and as we had left fairly late in the
afternoon, we anchored in a beautiful bay, just off the village of Kiparissi.
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| Kiparissi village, Peloponnisos |
We exited Greece
from our next stop, the island
of Kythira. We anchored in the little port of Kapsali. Unlike last time we were here, the bay was
alive with holiday makers, swimming, eating, chatting. We discovered that we
could not clear customs here, so a very friendly taxi driver drove us half way
across the island to the main ferry port
of Dhiakofti. This gave us an unexpected tour of the
island! We were sad to see the devastation that the recent forest fires had
caused to the pine forests of the island.
We said “Goodbye” to Greece
at first light the next morning, departing on the three day trip to Malta. We managed a lovely sail for around 8 hours,
but mostly we motored for lack of wind.
We slowed the boat on the last day to arrive in daylight. We arrived very early the next morning, winding our way between around 50 anchored
ships, entering Marsamxett
Harbour at dawn.
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| Valletta at dawn from Marsamxett Harbour. |
Malta
has an amazing history. It was, at one stage or another, settled by Neolithic
peoples, the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, the Knights
of St. Johns, the French and the English.
It has the oldest temples known, which are aligned for the equinox and
the winter and summer solstices.
These were built in 3,600 B.C.
Within them they found stone and clay statues of deities and many other artifacts.
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| Neolithic temple entrance. |
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| Statues from Neolithic temple |
Malta
has undergone two great sieges in it’s history.
The Knights of St. John withstood a Turkish siege in 1562 and the second
was in WWII, whereafter the bravery of the Maltese people was rewarded with a
George cross to the whole island. This
now flies proudly on their flag. We will just be missing the celebration of the
defeat of the Turks on 8th September and the entire island is
festooned with flags, in anticipation of this.
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| Flags above a village in central Malta. |
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| Lunch stop in Marsaxlokk fishing village. |
The headquarters of the Knights was Fort St. Angelo, which was also heavily
bombed in WWII and still stands proud.
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| Fort St. Angelo, Valletta Harbour. |
The whole island is built from limestone blocks. There are
some magnificent structures in many of the towns. We visited the Grand
Masters Palace
and Armory (used now by the President of Malta),
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| The Armory museum |
St John’s Cathedral in which many knights are
buried under the floor,
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| Knight's grave |
Knight's
the Inquisitor’s Palace (the only one opened by the
Catholic Church to the public) complete with torture chamber and prison cells.
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| Grand Master's Palace |
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| Kitchen in Inquisitor's palace |
We leave on Tuesday 5th September for Sicily, bound for Porto
Empedocle.
