Malta: Mgarr Town Gozo to Blue Lagoon (Tuesday 12/06/2018)

Waking in Mgarr Town Marina there seemed little rush to leave.


Children change the character of a sailing holiday. They do not tolerate the early starts, long passages and late-night drinking that usually forms the liver-bruising itinerary of a week at sea. Meals become orderly affairs with three courses, cutlery and a selection of most major food groups; the sailing ceases to be an endurance sport and the night-life takes on more sedate character. Gone are the raucous small hours during which the pinnacle of entertainment is measured by how many hysterical adults can squeeze into a coin operated children’s ride.


Our destination was a stone’s throw away and there was time for some exploring. Mgarr town extended up a steep incline topped by several churches whose spires poked tantalisingly over the crest of the hill.

Mgarr Cathedral - Might be Arundel though...

The harbourside was a tumbledown collection of dilapidated working structures, marked out by peeling paint and missing windows but following the rise, the buildings became better cared for.

We walked the children past a Phoenician fishing boat, installed on the promenade in what resembled an unloved swimming pool and to the neighbouring fountain where they played happily. Jenny and Tom volunteered to go on a further provisioning run, perhaps unwisely considering the rapidly rising temperature. They departed for the supermarket we had walked past the night before, which had been closed, we assumed, due to the lateness of the hour. The truth was the lateness of the owner who had sadly scanned his bar code and checked out at the checkout.


Eventually, as the road was beginning to delaminate in the heat, they returned. Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies glow but as they manhandled 24 litres of bottled water along the gangway in 35-degree heat, the classification was starting to break down. But for a clandestine 20-euro taxi ride, that Tom was probably right to file under the heading ‘worth it’, the worst had been avoided and we were able to wring them both out and peg their limp forms to the Bimini to dry out in the sun.


Resolving to escape the sweltering heat and head for open water, we took in the lines and fenders and motored into the channel between Gozo and Comino.


The wind was slight, so we turned to port and motor-sailed around the south-eastern headland before turning north to our pilot book’s recommendation, San Blas Bay. Essential reading for all Mediterranean sailors and a staple of the chart table of any charter yacht are the cruising pilot books of Rod Heikell. Rod’s writings are the literary love child of Lonely Planet and Herman Melville; a vast sweeping panorama of the coasts and roadways of most major sailing areas, punctuated like semi-precious stones by vignettes about isolated anchorages and intransigent harbour masters.

Moby

Dick

San Blas Bay featured in a fleeting foot note but caught our attention for one reason and one reason only; the beach. Alex had been waiting patiently for Malta to offer up a sandy spot for him to launch his new bucket and spade combo. With a few notable exceptions, the archipelago’s terrain does not lend itself to the accumulation of sand, due to hard rock strata, plunging cliffs and the incessant pounding of the waves.


San Blas represented a rare opportunity for castle-building and Alex made it crystal clear that the waiting was over, and he would not be denied. But, while the flesh was willing, the logistics were weak and getting Alex and his paraphernalia to shore was harder than it first appeared. At the first try, father and son climbed into the wobbly inflatable and motored from the anchorage to shore, only to find it strewn with jagged rocks that made beaching the dinghy a rib-breaking certainty, in every sense of the word. Returning to the boat, we collected Jenny who gamely agreed to help, before repeating the journey.


Lifting Alex and his bag of Chinese plastic turtle torture out of the dinghy and wading through the chest deep water, I carried him to shore in the face of two mounting realisations. Firstly, the surf line was clogged with 10 metres of dense, shredded seaweed caught in a perpetual wave powered washing machine cycle. It concealed countless submerged rocks and made a straight-forward task, perilous. Secondly, the beach was smaller than a sandwich and was already occupied by many more slack-skinned octogenarians than permitted by The Maltese Parasol (Beach Density) Regulations. The small area of conventional beach had long since been appropriated by the early risers who were by now in thrall to the terrible plot clichés of their Dan Browns. The late-commers lay in contorted positions between the serrated edges of boulders and rocks that littered the raffish end of the foreshore. Legs were akimbo and necks strained at pulse constricting angles.


As Jenny cavorted in the surf, playing the Bond Girl (rather well), I brandished my child like an icon at the vanguard of a jolly English Anschluss, whilst engaging in a series of ice-breaking Davinci Code Dan-ecdotes. I surreptitiously annexed enough space between a pair or perma-tanned Germans and their industrial cool-box, to give Alex a sandy bottom. In doing so I exposed a cruel but long dormant trick played on me by a German friend in 1995 which led to a distinct chill in the warming Anglo-German détente. I now know that it is discourteous to refer to a retired German Ambassador as a Schaftwanker when he has devoted his career to vigorous Botschafting.

While Alex began to excavate, Jenny and I took turns to hold the dinghy in the chest-deep surf, just beyond the line of seaweed terror. Jenny’s flip flop disappeared into the black morass and every step through its turgid, rasping awfulness, rekindled my paralysing kelp neurosis.


Eventually, Alex was satisfied, having unearthed one strapless sandal and a plastic bag with contents of unknown but distinctly unsettling provenance. We returned him to the waiting dinghy and retraced our steps, but the drama was not over. After stalling repeatedly in the swell on the way back to the boat, the outboard nearly slipped from our grasp and into the murky depths below as we removed it from the dinghy to fix to the transom.


Unsatisfied with one postage stamp beach, we returned to the Blue Lagoon in the late afternoon hoping to find that the giant tourist boats had left and that we could enjoy the spectacle undisturbed. As we arrived, the last of the human flotsam was being swept aboard for departure and the snaking toilet queues had dwindled. Even the mobile humus van was closing up for the night and as we anchored, the sun slipped fast toward the horizon, silhouetting Mgaar Town’s distant domes across the channel.

Blink and you miss it!

We swam in the gin clear water, oblivious to the bloom of mauve stinger jellyfish that were migrating down the channel towards us. Tom finned to the rock arches on Comino and the children enjoyed a well-deserved ice-cream in the shallows, but death stalked us with every stroke. Jenny’s number was nearly up as she grappled heroically with the venomous tentacles and but for the timely application of a steady stream of balsamic vinegar to her swollen wrist, her story might have ended there. I can only applaud Tom for the having the presence of mind to capture and up-cycle Jenny’s vinegary run-off, having simultaneously knocked up a Greek salad, whilst attending to his wife’s ebbing life force.

I am not joking - this was the beach.

A sting in the tail.

As darkness fell, lights illuminated the necklace of medieval watch-towers that dot the coast line.


Tom coaxed something delicious from little more than 400 euros of provisions.


Wine was drunk.


Jelly fish were cursed.


Life was affirmed.