KISSING THE GUNNER'S DAUGHTER

Our tale begins in Luton - but stick with me, my story gets better...

The flight from Luton to Luqa was delayed by an hour and subject to the obligatory screaming infant always just one row away... However, due to a favorable tailwind we ended up only being 5 minutes late in Malta. This be my first photo taken in Malta!

**On the second day of Malta, my Captain brought to me - three crates of beer, two lengths of timber and a baby sat next to a circular saw...**

FIVVVEEEE GOLLLLDD REEEEEENNNGS!!

BELOW: My new home!

I'm hoping that this blog will (on the whole) avoid any unnecessary flirtation with the prosaic or the poetic, here's to sticking to the hard, maniacal facts... For now. Maybe.

Malta seems to be very close to what I expected it to be, a little run down in appearence but only in that sunburnt, Mediterranean way that is strangely appealing. Nicole picked me up from the airport in the fantastic tank-like beaten up old Land Rover, and we had fun definitely not getting lost on our way to the marina in Gzira.

Under (the oddly warm) cover of darkness this looked to me like an enormous harbour (as harbours go), it is in fact the largest natural harbour in Europe apparently, which became clear by the time I was able to take a stroll halfway around it after work on day two. The golden lit walls of the old town of Valletta shine out towards the opposing lights of Gzira, to which we are nearer.

As you can see from the bad photo above, I have one of the guest cabins onboard, with the old hull planking making up one wall. There is a double bed beneath the one in the photo. It was very quiet by midnight of my first night here, I wondered if everyone else in the world had been eaten by sharks. Turns out they nearly had been, but that's a different story altogether...

WORD OF CAUTION: I expect blog coherence and sensibility to die an untimely and sudden death over the course of this first month!

Turns out this is the last original Brigantine left sailing in the world! There are many modern ones based on old designs, but nothing still floating on original planks! Except us. All you other Brigantines are just imitating... Apparently an empty ship can be quite an eerie thing at night... But I wouldn't have it any other way.

On the morning of day two Rony broke the sad news that the deal with the film crew that had been arranged for the first nine weeks of the season, from the end of March onwards, had fallen through. They chose America over Malta for location in the end, something about backgrounds... So no film crew. Yet. Instead there is a good chance of us getting a dive group around the same time, towards the end of March, which should be good fun. I imagine that my experience here will change in tempo a great deal once the restoration of the ship is complete and the season starts and we can do some serious pira - erm, sailing...

The pampered, yapping thing on the ship parked on our starboard flank is both lamentable and drownable, as are its owners as far as I can tell.

It is just warm enough at night to sit outside in a shirt at the moment. The skies remain relatively clear all day. The temperature when I got up on day two was 16.6°c. Day two (Tuesday) saw Rony arrive at 10am sharp, then I drove us through the midmorning traffic of Gzira in the Land Rover to the timber merchants, where we bought two lengths of timber which we then spent all day fashioning into six cradles that were then used to support the sections of the new mast whilst it was assembled early on the morning of day three. It turns out that traditional Maltese spicy tuna sandwiches are absolutely delicious! Rony and I also stopped at the steelyard, where the new mast was prepared in its three sections. During the evening of day two I took my first look around the harbour in a couple of hours, it was very busy, but it was good to get a look around, all modern shops and restaurants, predictably.

Got up early on day three and started by shifting the freshly made timber cradles back down onto the jetty in time for the mast sections to arrive, which they did, almost on time. "Oh, he's probably taken them down to the Black Pearl, around the corner." I was told... Sadly I think it's just a restaurant. We rolled the new mast sections off the low loader onto a bed of car tires (because they weigh 250kg each). From there we moved them onto the cradles and built an igloo of piping and tarps within which we would be able to cut and weld without damaging the curious public.

BELOW: Essential instructions come included!

ABOVE: Paxos takes command...

BELOW: The Igloo of Welding takes shape...

BELOW: The new mast arrives...

The remainder of day 3 consisted of removing the rust from various pieces of iron whilst mast cutting continued secluded from the world by the mighty igloo. Between bruises and rust shrapnel, I'm falling apart! Oh, and it turns out battery acid DOES eat through clothes... Oops.

BELOW: Jaden inspects the new mast sections.

Today (day 4) involved moving two crosstrees onto the jetty where we de-nailed them, sanded them down and painted them with primer. Sunny day today, it felt hot, but my comments on this (it being a mere eighteen degrees) were met with; "wait until it hits 45 degrees!!" which apparently it does for most of the summer, with high humidity too... Welding commenced early in the morning and continued through the day... Rony and I removed rust and paint from iron whilst Jaden commanded things down below from her playpen up on deck. Didn't sleep too well last night, it turns out that dreaming your ship is being boarded by undesirables and then waking up to a collection of murmurs and noises isn't so much fun. But it's OK, the ship hasn't been boarded like that for a couple of years...

So here I am, half lost directly between the drug-peddling queer mafia and the great white shark breeding grounds lies a tiny jetty of land from which one types here and now... More to follow, wily cats. To see EVEN MORE photos, check out this set on Flickr!! http://www.flickr.com/photos/elttotybot/sets/72157600129675542/. I'm going to make a different set for each month.

ps. Here be some jolly japes from this very evening (a test to see if my videos work on here OK, too.) :-D