Musket Cove Regatta Week

We were slow getting underway this am. I was still camped out in my jammies drinking coffee when I saw Andrew from Hawkeye motoring toward us to pick up some pictures we promised. He surprised us with a bottle of wine for the shots of his boat in the Round Malolo race. The wine was a nice touch—especially because Ev accidentally smashed our portion of the prize from the race: a bottle of rum. (The prize for placing as the second cat was $100 fuel voucher, rum and a case of water).

Regatta Week is over. And for an event we hadn’t known about prior to meeting Mamalu—we can’t rave about it enough. It’s a must with the Auzzie/Kiwi crowd but somehow news of the event really hasn’t reached the rest of the cruising community. Which is odd because:

a) It’s free.

b) There are a lot of very generous prizes to be had.

c) They feed and fill us with booze on a couple of occasions.

d) There are some great races and a good variety of beach activities.

We missed the first few days of the week-long event but were quickly pulled into activities as soon as we arrived. Our first afternoon was the beach sports day. We spent the afternoon running three-legged races, tossing coconuts and playing volleyball (we were adopted by the Fiji team because we split up by nationality and there were no other Canadians). That night it was a fancy dress party with an R&R theme—so everyone came as something that started with “R”. Evan was road kill, Maia was a rainbow, and, in deference to our friends on Connect 4 who have been onsite for two different reef groundings, I was a reef with a sailboat on my shoulder. Maia’s costume got her a prize—a choice between a frothy resort drink and a pizza voucher.

The next day we raced and I fell in deep lust, and am still heartbroken so won’t talk about it.

Yesterday was the final day. There were hobie cat races and a dinghy decorating contest. We decorated the dinghy with a palm-frond Christmas tree and fake fire-place with stockings. After doing a terrible job of singing Christmas Carols for the judge we were awarded second place and received a very generous prize of a $40 voucher for the resort store, a pizza voucher and a bottle of wine.

Then it was on to the pig roast—which honestly had been the selling factor that got me to the regatta. I really wanted to go to a South Pacific pig roast… And while the pig was great, the entire night was a blast.

After a cocktail party and the beating of the retreat by Fiji’s ‘royal’ police force (apparently the country is still in denial over being kicked out of the Commonwealth—the Queen is still on all the money and it seems the hope is that coup thing will eventually be forgotten and they’ll get reinstated) we were seated banquet style.

Initially we were disappointed that this meant we wouldn’t get to sit with Connect 4 and that we’d be forced to (horrors) mingle. But our table turned out to be excellent fun. Andrew was there and we realized that it was his boat that I had a great series of shots of. There were also a couple of nice young crew girls at our table and Ev was rather pleased with himself when two of them claimed him as their dance partner for a good part of the night.

It almost made up for the fact that our late start at regatta week meant we had missed the wet t-shirt contest…