The journey began a bit early for most of us as we wanted to be sure we would be able to get to the airports with the lovely snow storm that was meant to hit England. Lucky it did not hit but unfortunately it meant sleeping on the comfortable and cold airport floors. When we eventually boarded our flight, we managed to find one another and had a good flight after a short delay.
After we arrived in Malta, the group was split between adventurous and wise. The majority was wise and grabbed a taxi while the rest decided a fun local bus journey to the port would be the best way. During the bus journey, one member of the adventurous crew thought they spotted the wondrous Tenacious. The lovely Maltese bus driver told us walk down the hill as we arrived at the correct bus stop, but we chose the wrong hill to walk down. We walked away from the real Tenacious and arrived at what turned out to be an imitator! Many times we would see stairs leading up to a wall and thought, it must be just over that wall, but most times we were wrong. Apart from having 15-20 kilo bags on our backs and 2 hours wandering it was a lovely walking adventure through the hilly streets of Vittoriosa.
By the time the 4 adventurous members made it to the ship, most of the other voyage crew had made it to the ship and had had tea and relaxation.
After having an evening meal, some of us headed into the town of the port to the local and had some local tapas with beer and wine. The following day everyone was ready to sail and get the sea adventure started. Unfortunately the adventure was delayed due to some beauocratic problems involving paper work and fuel. Due to the dark nights and prevailing winds, the captain decided to stay at port the night.
Some of the younger voyagers headed to Party Town about 30 minutes from the port for a fun night out. They prepared in a rather unusual fashion though with four playing scrabble while another crocheted a beanie. Once they hit party town , they had a great time interacting with the local Maltese females while having a good laugh out on the town. As for the rest of the crew, they stayed on the ship doing various activities including sleeping, scrabbling and reading. The following morning, the ship was set to sail and all paper work was sorted. The anticipation was high and everyone was excited, but yet another delay pushed the departure back. After what some members called a large cruise ship and others considered it small finally made its way through the narrow entrance gap after what seemed to be a long time, the Tenacious was granted permission to set sail. Once out of the harbour and into open water where rather strong winds were prevailing, the team got straight into action. They were pulling ropes to set the sails in the right direction and then some voyagers went aloft to assist in releasing the sails. Two voyagers unfortunately had to scrub potatoes for the first sails setting, but there will be plenty of opportunities for them to get tucked in. The first day on the ship was a mix of weather from dark clouds dropping large rain drops to lighter fluffy clouds with bursts of sunshine.
FWD st'bd