.: A week of fun and nonsense.

The annual regatta at Musket Cove was even better than last year (although we missed our friends Don and Martha from Canada who were with us last season).

Peter makes me a tropical breakfast each day after my sunrise Yoga session.

The opening night began with each country singing their national anthem. Since New Zealand was the largest contingent they also entertained us by performing the “Hakka”, which is the war dance that their national rugby team, The All Blacks commence every match with. In addition to a wonderful hosted cocktail hour and dinner, we danced the night away to the sounds of the Culture Club.

Our old buddy Suzie from Sidewinder taking the shuttle with us to Beachcomber

The highlight of this week is reconnecting to old sailing buddies that we have met over our six seasons of sailing, as well as meeting new friends from around the world. We have spent a good deal of time with Suzie and David from Sidewinder who we got to know last year.

Being met by pirates as we landed at Beachcomber Island

The first day of the regatta we had them aboard for our race to Beachcomber Resort. It was just a fun day with little wind so all of us motor-sailed for 2 hours each way and enjoyed a great afternoon on the island.

The first heat getting ready at the start line

Sunday dawned sunny and bright (as per usual for Fiji) so we headed in on our dinghy to defend Peter (and Don’s) 2^nd place finish last year in the Merlin Match Race. I was on the helm and Peter managed the sails (plus telling me what to do every second of the race since I didn’t really have a clue). Great news….we won 1^st place! Peter was dead keen to call Don in the middle of the night to rub it in, but I managed to prevail and not call him till a reasonable hour the next day!

Peter checking out the competition from the race committee starting line

And they are off (we had to win 4 elimination rounds for the championship)

I did discover that I loved racing in this little boat. It was my first time ever, and of course the win helped me to be even more enthusiastic. I now want to take some racing lessons (yes, my second favourite Captain Joe, you are probably killing yourself laughing).

This newfound keenness inspired us to take a Merlin in the Sandbar race where we were really dwarfed with the other sailboats. The winds were also fairly strong and we were doing a lot of heeling and darting in and out of the boats as we all tacked through two reefs. A little overwhelming for me, and it resulted in a few arguments between Peter and me, but I managed to convince him that we couldn’t possibly win the race against the big boys, so he dialed down his racing instinct and we made it safely home across the finish line.

I was so relieved that we made it, I got a bit complacent. Peter was up on the bow taking down the sails and not paying attention (he also forgot I really didn’t know what the heck I was doing in this boat). The next thing we knew I almost t-boned an anchored sailboat. I had been communicating to Peter that we were getting closer, but he has a habit of tuning me out when it pertains to sailing. It wasn’t until almost the point of impact when I yelled bloody murder “We are going to hit the boat”, and the four guys on board jumped up that Peter looked up and yelled at me “hard over with the tiller”. We managed to squeak by and drop below their stern, but everyone had their heart in their throat. As you can imagine Peter & I had a pretty colourful conversation following this near miss.

Peter and David from Sidewinder sharing a few laughs - see the cool houseboat in background beached right on the sandbar.

That afternoon on the sandbar beach was filled with frivolity and fun. It is a really cool sandbar that gets buried at high tide, but is a long sandbar during low tide so the organizers set up games and a bar.

David and Suzie (Sidewinder) being good sports in the beer drinking competition

Not only are the days filled with sailing and beach activities but each night is chock full of fun as well. For the costume party, everyone was supposed to come dressed in the letter S. I went as “Sexy” with my swim suit cover-up. The only thing I could talk Peter in to doing was going as “Stick in the Mud”, which meant he didn’t have to dress up or participate, so he was happy.

Let the party begin....

Doing the costume parade

Okay...so David and I having way too much fun with Suzie egging us on!

The premier event during the week is the race around Malo Island. We decided that just Peter and I would be aboard and that Peter was going to practice “non-yelling”. (I’m sure that cracked a couple of smiles for those of you who know how competitive he is and how his communication style is rather robust). Anyway, he agreed that we would hang back at the start so that we didn’t have the stress of jockeying for position, since this is a race that most of the sailors take quite seriously. I also got a “promise” that we were out for a nice afternoon and that we weren’t going to heel excessively or push the envelope. To Peter’s credit, after only a few little “yells” (which he says were not yelling at all) we ending up having a lovely day on the ocean and finished 11^th out of 16 boats, so we didn’t do too badly in spite of my “wimpiness”.

Following the boats heading around the first bend.

During the farewell evening, we accepted our championship trophy (and rum, of course) for the Merlin Match race and had a wonderful time with our friends…old and new.

Could life get any better?

With our winning hardware

Yesterday we had a lazy (non-alcohol) day to recover from the week and for Peter to gloat over the big win.

We are now just planning our routing to leave Fiji and head to the country of Futuna (a French overseas territory). This is just a formality as we need to leave the country and re-enter Fiji in order to renew our 18 month visa. Our plan, as of this moment, is that we will spend the rest of this season in Fiji and fly home for Christmas and the winter season around December 15^th. As always, though cruisers plans are written in sand at low tide.