Malta (octopus salad and rosé)
By the time the boat got to Malta our boss had essentially told the whole crew that rowdy boozing was prohibited. It’s just too bad we got to Malta on a Thursday, because that city GOES OFF on the weekend. Thursday was casual and I made up some ground by declining shots of jaeger when my boss ordered a tray for us at a club (obviously he was testing me. Unfortunately it was a war of attrition and I was the last man standing). Friday on the other hand. HOOOOOOLLLLLYYYYY. We started in the club district and the best memory I have is of one of the crew-members buying a bottle of rum (from the bar?), stuffing it into his pants and smuggling them into every bar. No matter what you ordered, you’d eventually have half your drink full of white rum.
A few of the boys didn’t make it back to the boat before sunrise that night, but fortunately there were no major incidents. Of course that just left the door open for Saturdays debauchery. On that night we stayed in the old part of Malta and started off by drinking at the last bar Oliver Reed visited before he died…of drinking. We were doomed right from the start: great octopus salad and great wine. The wine was so great that I ordered three bottles of it. When I look back on the event and go “man how did things escalate so quickly that night?” I am tempted to say “Oh well that just happens sometimes. Out of your control.” But that’s obviously bologna. Thing’s went from mellow octopus salads and rosé to shirtless bar-crawling because when you START the night with three bottles of rosé, the end of the night is going to be fucked. And it was just that. Two of us went back to the boat in a police car, one of which was shirtless with a half inch cut above his eye; another one got dropped off sometime around the noon by the local Bacardi rep; and the other crew member still to this day has no idea how he got home. I will let you try and figure out which one of them I was.
