The Malta Independent 8 November 2024, Friday
View E-Paper

All at sea in the storm

Noel Grima Sunday, 27 October 2024, 07:09 Last update: about 14 days ago

I hurried over lunch and rushed to the wide balcony.

I had never seen the Middle Sea Race beginning from Malta, though I could always watch from the bastions. So this now was a golden opportunity.

But when I looked I could see nothing. Only some minutes later I began to discern some spots but they were in the wrong place and they were moving in the wrong direction, my misinformed mind told me.

It was only after waiting some more minutes that I began to discern the spots becoming sails and finally begin the long trek counterclockwise around Sicily.

Now over the previous day I had received some considerable stick over repeating a prediction in Italian of a Medicane, a Mediterranean hurricane.

For the legion of desktop warriors I was wishing something bad to this fair isle.

They were far more scathing with the person behind one of Malta's main weather sites. And probably for the only time in recent history the critics were angry not because the website was forecasting a bad storm but because the forecast bad storm had not come.

And when the next day dawned and it was only a drizzle, all heavens opened and abuse came fast and strong.

The weather forecast page had to suspend its activity.

Indeed, we did not get a Medicane. But the boats wending their way northwards along the coast of Sicily did get the full brunt of wind and high waves. So much so that one suffered damage and had to retire from the race.

The whole race faced the terrible force of the Medicane.

And it was not only in open sea - cities like Syracuse, Catania and even Reggio across the Strait suffered from huge avalanches of rain that turned streets into rivers.

In Catania the central Via Etnea became a fast flowing river. And around the La Rinascente department store the river caught an elderly man on his motorino, separated them from each other and was carrying the elderly man with it.

Until a salesgirl with a dark skin, a Nigerian woman, a 28-year-old single mother with a daughter who works in a gelateria across the road, plucked up courage and waded across, pulling the elderly man to safety in a shop.

The other people watched and filmed on the mobile but none waded in to save the man except for this woman.

Possibly many of the onlookers are among those who would want to deport the dark skinned migrants away to Albania as Giorgia Meloni wants to do.

The race continued along its planned route and by the time I'm writing this, on Monday evening, the three front runners are already on the home straight heading for home. The rest are strung behind them. By tomorrow morning, Tuesday, I expect to see them passing with their colourful sails in front of our balcony.

Before they made land they had to endure the huge lightning show in the darkest hours of the night.

Never had the twin arms of the Grand Harbour breakwater been more welcome.

It is a pity that the Race does not attract more attention except among the yachting fraternity.

Coming as it usually does when summer yields to autumn and wind and storms, there is a certain amount of excitement and maybe even risk attached to it.

We speak sometimes of spreading out visitors to Malta outside of summer and the Middle Sea Race is one way of doing this.

Another way could be to spread out the festivals such as was done with the Take That concert at Ta' Qali which had people coming over from the UK for it and ready to spend days and nights in a chair so as not to lose their place around the stage.

How different, I mused as I saw the sails mass outside the Grand Harbour - in other times such sails massing together signified trouble - May 1565 and the Turkish armada and May 1798 and Napoleon and his Armee.

[email protected]

 


  • don't miss