Malta Island – May 30th, 2004.

Timmy Gambin

It has been two days since the training team met in Malta in order to settle the last remaining details before the students’ arrival from France and Algeria (our six students of Maltese nationality are with us already).

The preparation of our stay has been cared for by Timmy Gambin. He chose Mellieha in the north, where we rented two adjoining flats as a base camp. We then had to decide how the catering would be best provided for, negotiate with the diving club which was to rent us the diving gear, see how lay the cove of It-Torri I-Abjad where we will dive on the wreck - the object of our excavation campaign, and the main diving training site for our students.

It is the very first time that the It-Torri I-Abjad wreck, which has been discovered forty years ago, is to be explored by archaeologists. A rough map of the visible remains, and two little swiveling cannons (pedreros) that were recovered just after the wreck was found, are the only items available to the team. We have to start from there.

	Hervé Blanchet onboard the Madona Ta’Pinu

Meanwhile, the Madona Ta ‘Pinu, the launch the Malta Maritime Authority lent us, was fitted out with the necessary equipment by Hervé Blanchet. With that boat, we will be able to spend the first week effecting magnetometrical prospecting operations, to the benefit of the Maltese students sent to us by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage.

But first we had to spend two whole days checking how the gear aboard the launch would work with the sensors we wanted to use – a magnetic probe, a GPS positioner, a bathymetric probe - and modifying the boat a little to set up a winch.

Adlane and Djamal Ferchouli and Souad Lamouti, our three Algerian trainees, will join us in the evening after a stop in Tunis.