Over the years, two sailing clubs had to be moved because of private interests: the Royal Malta Yacht Club and Vikings Sailing Club.
The yacht club had to leave its premises in Couvre Porte on Manoel Island, where it had been since 1970, to make way for the Midi development.
It took years to find a suitable site but eventually, in 2008, the club moved to the old Customs House in Ta’ Xbiex. The move was seamless; the Rolex Middle Sea Race went ahead without interruption. The club now has seasonal pontoons and a gym, and has invested some €1.5 million.
How different to the Vikings Sailing Club story. Just over a decade ago, the club – founded in 1984 – was thriving, with 200 members, its own sailing courses, courses run on behalf of Skolasajf, and a keelboat cruising section. It organised a regular calendar ofsold-out events and campaigns to attract children to sailing.
Many of these remain keen sailors to this day and dozens have taken it up as a temporary or permanent career. Around this time, its success was so compelling that it was given the site in Haywharf by a unanimous vote in Parliament. Determined fundraising helped them to raise enough to buy some new sailing boats and to refurbish others.
The government is claiming that the move was necessary because of the EU-funded upgrade of the AFM’s Maritime Squadron. But as soon as plans for the Sa Maison marina emerged, it was painfully obvious that the AFM would have no place to spread unless it was shunted closer to the Grand Hotel Excelsior to make way for this private sector project – in other words, right where Vikings was blissfully ignorant, doing what it did best – instead oflobbying vociferously to make sure its rights would be respected.
Its agreement with the Lands Department had six more years to run but it was unilaterally terminated last October. And there was, in its case, no time to even build up indignant opposition. The government snatched the keys out of its hands while promising to them use of old garages behind the clubhouse, when it must have known full well that these were utterly inadequate – not to mention unsafe.
It would take €120,000 to refurbish the garages, funds which the non-profit organisation does not have. To add insult to injury, it is paying €512 every six months in rent for the garages.
Summer has come and nearly gone, and its boats are lying idle at the Ospizio in Floriana, while children looking forward to sailing classes end up bored and frustrated at home. And there is nothing the club can do about it. It can’t even fundraise its way to a solution because there is nowhere to do so, and it was given too little notice to do anything about it.
The two cases are not the same. For a start, the terms of the agreement that Vikings had with the government bear no resemblance to the RMYC’s situation at Manoel Island (if anything, Vikings had more right to the premises). But what is also clear is that the biggest difference was the respective committees’ ability to insist on a solution. The RMYC dangled the prospect of losing the Rolex sponsorship and drummed on and on about the economic impact of the yachting sector.
All Vikings Sailing Club had was a few kids and an innocent – naive – belief that the government really had its best interests at heart.