One of the things I like most about our flat in Sliema is watching the comings and goings in the bay. You never know what’s going to happen out there. Currently, very few boats are moored in St. Julian’s Bay, so when one comes in, it’s very noticeable. There is some pleasure craft activity out in the sea as boats sail or motor by so there is always something to see.
This morning a rather large vessel was anchored in the bay. With binoculars (never travel without them!) I could read the name on the boat. It was U Boat Navigator. Of course, I couldn’t just leave it at that, I had to Google the name and find out about it. This vessel is a specially designed vessel that has a submersible. It is used for research and historic relic searching on the sea bed. It was quite interesting to read on their website about all the things this vessel has been involved in. There are lots of photos on their website of some of their projects. Anyway, U Boat Navigator stayed in the bay all day and then took off in the late afternoon. I was hoping to see the submersible put into the water, but no such luck.
We spent the morning doing bookkeeping and catching up on things computer-wise. We then packed a picnic lunch and headed out to our rocks to find a suitable place to get into the water. All morning I had been keeping tabs on how people were getting into the water without ladders. There are a couple of places where there is a railing, which apparently are permanent fixtures, and I watched how easy or difficult it was for folks to make their way into the water.
The one thing about sunbathing on rocks is they are hard (duh!). We found a little ledge on which to park our butts, but didn’t really find a good place to spread out and lie down. Many people do get rather creative in their towel placement, but for now, we were happy to sit and enjoy the water and sun.
The water was too inviting, and soon we made our way into the bay. There was a trough between some rocks, and a railing, where we could carefully make our way down the trough. The challenge doing this was the sea swell that came up into the trough and then kind of pulled you in as the swell swept back into the bay. With that, one didn’t stand around too long deciding whether the water was too cold or not. I took the plunge rather quickly. Christine made her way in very slowly, unsure of her footing. She got laughing at the push and pull of the sea swells in the trough, as did a lady sitting on the rocks nearby. But finally she took the plunge as well. It was glorious being in the sea again.
We both successfully navigated the trough to exit. You had to time your footing with the swells, but we both accomplished this. Soon we were enjoying our Maltese bread sandwiches and eating grapes while warming up in the sun. After awhile, my butt was hurting, so I managed to find a place to stretch out. We both had found books in the flat to take with us. It’s impossible to read an e-book on an iPad in the sun, so we rummaged around in the little library in the flat and pulled out a couple of novels. We’ve been so on the go the past 6 six weeks that I haven’t done any pleasure reading.
We took another dip and then returned to the flat and cleaned up. We headed to the market to purchase some things for dinner. One nice things is that the market has a specialty of rotisserie chicken. We bought a chicken and salad stuff and had a nice dinner sitting out on the balcony. I read until bedtime and Christine caught up on emails.
So, while this is not terribly interesting to read, we had a wonderful day.