Fiji Regatta Week at Musket Cove Island Resort. Photo / Christopher Reive
Fiji Regatta Week at Musket Cove Island Resort. Photo / Christopher Reive
Sitting on the dusty green grass under the shade of a coconut tree, it’s not hard to adopt the excitement from the cheers howling out from the Island Bar of Musket Cove Island Resort.
It’s just gone 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon, and the annual Fiji Regatta Week onMalolo Lailai Island has reached its grandstand event. The noise isn’t for a big race out at sea that is contested on big boats. Those come earlier in the week. This is fanfare for duelling hobie cats – the small, two-person catamarans anyone can hire at several resorts around Fiji – which provide the vessels for some of the most heated racing of the week. The resortified boats are a great leveller, with everything coming down to performance on the day. They compete in heats of two and match racing tactics come to the fore around the short, beachside course. Spectators sit in a makeshift grandstand, gasping as the strong breeze threatens to tip the speeding vessels and applauding every team as they return to shore. It doesn’t take long for me to understand why the final stages of this particular event are saved for the last on-water activity of the five-day programme.
The hobie cat racing gets hugely competitive during Fiji Regatta Week at Musket Cove Island Resort. Photo / Joel Russell, Musket Cove Island Resort
Peter Boyd has been coming to Regatta Week at Musket Cove for 32 years now. He has won the hobie cat event just once. “That gets a bit agro at times, in a nice way,” he says. “That’s the hardest one to win here. Out of all the times here, I’ve won it once with my daughter. At the ‘Round the Island race, I’ve been on 10 of the winning boats. That just shows you the hobie cats are harder to win than the ‘Round the Island race.”
This year’s was the 41st edition of Regatta Week, an event held each September that has embedded itself into the fabric of the cruising calendar. It’s a competitive affair when racing begins, but in the times outside of competition, it’s a bubbling cauldron of good vibes. Its origins are founded in camaraderie; original Musket Cove owner Dick Smith (no, not that Dick Smith) established the week at the traditional end of the cruising season, with a flotilla sail on to Vanuatu at its conclusion. The resort – a 50-minute ride on the Malolo Cat away from Port Denarau - lends itself to being a popular spot for sailors, with waterways running through it allowing for boats to dock well beyond the jetty or out at sea. Out the front door of my two-bedroom villa, three catamarans, a monohull and a yacht sit anchored up less than 100m away.
Musket Cove Island Resort mixes lodgings and waterways, making it a popular resort among sailors. Photo / Christopher Reive
“He liked here because it was a great anchorage for his boat, so he saw that was what everybody else would be into as well. From the get-go, it was always a yachting and boating-centric resort,” current owner and director Will Moffat explains.
“None of the other resorts have like what we have here with the waterways and the pontoons and the boats and the moorings and bringing that external element...for us, we’re more water sports orientated.”
Over the past 41 years, regatta week has evolved. With improvements in technology around navigation, weather forecasting, internet availability and the like, there is no real such end point to the cruising season. Moffat says people now stay right through the cyclone season and are happier to move in smaller groups. Instead, the week in September now acts as an opportunity for sailors to have a bit of fun both on and off the water before making their next moves. The regatta still attracts sailors from around the world, with more than 200 attendees across more than 70 boats taking part in 2025. For the past few years, the Ministry for Primary Industries has had a presence at the regatta to share information with sailors who are looking to head to New Zealand next. This year was the first time Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry followed suit, with an officer on-site to advise yachties around biosecurity requirements before travelling Downunder.
Musket Cove Island Resort is a 50-minute ferry ride away from Port Denarau. Photo / Christopher Reive
“They’re able to come up and make sure that people are well educated on protecting New Zealand [and Australia] before they come down, whether it’s a hull scrub here with the divers and things like that, photographs, or whether it’s a haul out at Bunda [Marina] and pressure wash,” Moffat says.
“While we’ve got 78 boats or whatever [in the regatta], there’s probably 120 boats out in the bay, so both the sponsors but also those government entities are able to hit a large portion of the people. At this time of the year, if you came in June, by the time you get to now they’d have already forgotten about what they were told. At least now people later in the season are starting to think about going home or moving on to New Zealand and Australia so it’s a good time to get it in their minds.”
The hobie cats are among the highlights during Fiji Regatta Week at Musket Cove Island Resort. Photo / Christopher Reive
Boyd, not sailing in this year’s regatta due to an injury but at the resort in his role as a sponsor with the Opua Business Association and Bay Of Islands Marina, adds: “We want them to do the circuit, come to New Zealand, see New Zealand, spend a little bit of loot, get a refit, then come back up here and carry on. It’s only a year out of their lives.”
From a competitive perspective, races around Malolo Lailai Island and Malolo sandbank are the two more serious events, with the race out the Beachcomber Island – in which crews are encouraged to dress up as pirates with prizes for the best dressed – is described as a ‘doesn’t matter how you get there’ type of race. The hobie cats are an event in themselves, with heats throughout the week, while there are plenty of onshore activities such as a fun run, beach clean-up and games organised for kids.
Fiji Regatta Week at Musket Cove Island Resort has been running for 41 years. Photo / Joel Russell, Musket Cove Island Resort
Though the exact timing of the regatta changes year to year based on tide, school holidays and other variables, it’s little surprise the regatta sees so many returning participants. While the events throughout the week are fun and inclusive, the venue itself is a beautiful slice of paradise. Beyond the turquoise waters of the ocean and the white sand of the coconut tree-lined beach, the resort takes full advantage of the land it is built on, with lodgings being well-spaced and mostly away from the noise of the central areas like the eateries and the lobby. From the front porch of the villa, I can watch the fish and crabs around the rocks below. There’s an all-tide swimming and snorkelling area just off the island bar – a leisurely 10-minute stroll from my room – while the resort also offers snorkelling and dolphin-watching trips, as well as charters to the Cloud 9 floating bar and various surf breaks out on the ocean.
Musket Cove Island Resort. Photo / Christopher Reive
“That’s probably one of the successes of the regatta,” Moffat explains. “It’s not a hardcore windward-leeward race regatta as such. It’s for cruising boats and cruising families, so we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got activities that cover everybody.
“It all seems to sort of complement itself nicely, but ultimately it’s one of those things that people want to do it and, as I say, we just provide the venue. The guests and the participants are the ones that bring the atmosphere to it.”
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Fly from Auckland to Nadi direct with Fiji Airways.
