Malta: Valletta to St Paul's Bay (Sunday 10/06/2018).
The night time breeze picked up and the yacht's stern-lines rubbed loudly in the darkness. In the absence of rope... By 2am it was too much, and in the cramped aft cabin, I silently ransacked the suitcase in a fruitless search for some ear plugs that I knew I hadn’t packed. By 3am I had jerry-rigged a temporary solution using all my underwear and yesterday’s string of Maltese dog sausages. Mercifully, the rubbing stopped, but with pants that smelled so tantalising, I spent a week batting away every wet nose in Malta that made a bee-line for my groin. Not satisfied with a two hundred euro shop only ten hours before, when morning finally came, I was dispatched to find fresh bread. I ambled along the quayside as the church bells of Birgu pealed and before long the smell of baking led me to its source. As I walked through the door, the Victorian oven was opened and row after row of crackling loaves were piled unceremoniously onto the waiting marble. Round loa...