Fulanga Beach Blanket Bingo Party

The village people of Fulanga organized a beach –party to celebrate Fiji Constitution Day. They organized the cruisers to bring food to share and they supplied a pig for a roast. There was about a half-dozen boats in the bay among about 3 or 4 anchorages, including one super-yacht, Antares, a 131 foot ketch with a Hawaii/Vancouver couple and their two younger kids onboard.
The Antares group were very friendly, both the owners and crew. They took some interesting drone shots of the party. I’ll post some links when they send them to me.

All the cruisers brought in their water toys, SUPs and kayaks, into the beach for the party. The local kids spent hours in the water with them.

The biggest treat was this blow-up toy brought over by Antares.

For the smaller kids that couldn’t stay in the water too long, makng giant bubbles filled in the time before eating.

There was a pretty heavy rush for the food once the pork and shared dishes were laid out. Adults first before any kids could start. The kids all waited patiently. Chris baked a chocolate cake for desert. When it went out after the main courses were wiped out I walked over and saw a bunch of villagers staring at it. I picked up a spatula and started passing out pieces. It was decimated in minutes.

One of the patiently waiting kids.

Complimentary beverages were offered on-demand.

And of course Chris never turns down a free beverage.

One of the Dutch cruisers is traveling on his cataraman with his 91 year-old mother. That’s Mom waving in the dinghy. Each morning he would take her to the beach with her big-tire walker/wheel-chair and she would do a beach walk. Now what do you do to train your children to take care of you like this when you’re old? Not sure if this is just the Dutch way or not?

The village has this twin engine landing craft style boat. It hasn’t been operational for awhile due to steering issues. The engineer off Antares spent a few hours and got the steering running. Then all it took was to ‘borrow’ fuel from the cruisers and it was ready to go. This pic is using people power to push the heavy craft off the beach. I don’t think any of the cruisers thought it would be moved till high tide, but the village headman had a plan. All the villages loaded up and got a ride back to town from the sandspit party.

That’s all the villagers except the pig you see on the beach here. He stayed for lunch after a large, sharp knife was borrowed from a cruiser by the party planners.
Paul