On the 7th early morning we hoisted anchor and set course for Valletta, Malta for a little downtime. More maintenance and jobs to be done as usual. My old Bosun once said: "the work is never completed on a ship" and he was right to his words, once you get to one end you can start anew from the other.
Our route took us by Capri Island down South along the Italian boot in the Tyrrhenian Sea and through the Strait of Messina. We pass there during night time and there is a small "S" curve to do at the narrowest point. The whole Strait is VTS controlled and separated by a TSS so there are very few cowboys mixing the deck up, so to speak. However when we got around the dogleg we encountered some strong cross currents so we have to keep a close look at the autopilot lest it would lose the plot or go to manual steering.
View over Valletta
After the Strait we are already in the Ionian Sea, we sailed around around the boot, Sicily, and there we were at Malta. The ancient massive fortifications of Malta are still impressive to look at. We make the approach towards Manoel Island and it always looks to me like we are sailing into solid bedrock until the channel opening is discerned when one can see that there is more to it than the wall. This time though we made a compass swing before we entered the berth.
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