I believe the original owner had a liking for chocolate covered confectionery....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltesers

Tony...Brilliant!! ...still laughing... glad you posted the link, or our American cousins won't know what-on-earth we're on about!?!

Taking it a stage further, we could paint our crash hats chocolate brown... then we'd look like three of 'em in a row...

Might approach them for sponsorship, except they'd probably want the boat painted bright red... but now i'm just getting stupid ...and the big D in the sky will be looking-down and not amused....

Today "Maltese SpA" is the exclusive distributor of Magnum Marine for Europe and the Med and holds a building license for two models I think.
I was told that the name comes from the old, original company 'Maltese' which did basically the same.