We sailed into Malta in early-mid September to catch up with family and suss out the marina situation there. With the planned upgrade to Msida marina, berthing in Malta over winter was not an option, and so we left for Ragusa in early October, and headed into a marina with many previous friends - and acquaintances old and new…. It was great fun catching up with everyone. The marina is really well planned and very safe, so we had no hesitation in leaving Mischief there over the winter months.
With Bjorn’s parents not well, and pressure
building to visit as soon as possible, we reluctantly left the marina, headed
to Malta and then on to Sweden. We spent
three weeks there and watched Bjorn’s dad deteriorate… within three days of our
return to Malta,
he passed away.
Back in Malta, and visiting my parents, it
was becoming increasingly obvious that they also needed greater attention and
that perhaps their days of living independently were coming to an end. We were also in two minds about crossing the Atlantic anyway, and the need to stay put and help out was very much on our minds.
We watched as many of our friends just kept going
across the Atlantic and then continued across the Pacific, making it an almost two year trek. We always thought that if we cross the
Atlantic we would like to spend a few years in the Americas.
With the decision to stay in the Med for an
additional couple of years to see what happens, we decided to make Malta our base
for now and bought a small runabout (ie. car).
Things were brought to a head when my mum
fell and broke her hip, but thank goodness the surgery went well and she is
well on her way to recovery.
We had planned to spend a week or two in Ragusa in December to check on the boat, especially as the
autumn had brought along the usual swag of storms, so as my sister headed to Malta for a week to help out with our parents,
Bjorn and I took the opportunity to go and spend Christmas in Ragusa.
Having taken the car over with us via ferry, we took advantage of every
fine day to go and explore some the very beautiful surrounding towns like Ragusa city, Modica and
Scicli…
We had a very ‘merry’ Christmas, a
wonderful break, a good opportunity to check up on the boat, and headed back to
Malta
to ‘dry out’!!!
And now the serious thinking starts: on the one hand, we love our Mischief, but it is impractical to keep
such a boat in a marina in a different country and not have its enjoyment. Things are further complicated by
constantly changing laws in Europe, making it
difficult to cruise long term in the Med.
For example, Italy
has just this month introduced a tax for boats cruising in Italian waters from
May this year, which makes it even more prohibitive to keep the boat in Italian
waters. Space at Malta marinas are at a premium, Greece
has its own raft of taxes which make it difficult to keep a boat there over 3
months and both the EU and non EU alternatives are fading fast. It looks like we will have to reside in Malta for a short while, making it difficult to keep an Australian flagged ship in EU waters.
We are even looking into the possibility of
shipping Mischief back to Australia or to some other part of the world
such as Asia!!
Definitely a time of literal ‘seachange’,
or is going to be ‘landchange’, for us at present, but the adventures will
hopefully not stop, but rather change form.
