November 10, 2013
Once we were secured on the mooring, we decided to take our dinghy over to the Royal Suva Yacht Club, a historic building dating back to when Fiji was a territory of England. It’s still operating today and would be our base of operations here in Suva. For this we would pay a fee and sign up for a temporary membership to the club.
To get there we had to take a somewhat long dinghy ride past a breakwater and through the marina, most boats tied up med-moor style as the facilities weren’t exactly modern. We found the dinghy dock was also on the “historic” side, but at least it was functional. Stepping off from the dinghy dock we could see a fuel dock, handy but not big enough for Legacy to get into. On the far side of the fuel dock was a very small boatyard and marine store.
(Below, photo galleries of the marina area; the yacht club and the restaurant; you can click to enlarge and scroll through them.)
On our side of the fuel dock was the yacht club, built around a well-tended lawn shaded by a lovely flame tree. On the lawn were a few scattered picnic tables and a large screen for projected movies.
The yacht club itself had a large covered outdoor seating area next to the lawn, then a few stairs led up to the indoor bar. Outside the bar was a nice walkway with tables overlooking the lawn. The rest of the building included a rec room with a pool table, a main hall for functions and meetings, a small office, and, most importantly, an attached restaurant. This was not a tropical-style building but rather an old British building, complete with British yachting memorabilia and, naturally, a photo of the queen.
The club also had a few archaic rules concerning their dress code such as wearing “sensible casuals” during the day and “smart casuals” after 6pm (does having a wet-dinghy butt qualify as smart casual?). And males were forbidden to wear hats in the bar. If you forgot to remove said hat, you had to buy a round of drinks for everyone at the bar. (I don’t think they actually enforced this as it would be mighty expensive on a busy night.)
After signing in and getting our membership cards, we had an hour to kill before the restaurant opened for dinner. What a perfect time to go sit at one of those tables overlooking the lawn and enjoy a Fiji Bitter (our then beer of choice). It was a lovely place to sit! This club is actually located on the outskirts of Suva, the busy downtown area a mile way; so the feeling here was quiet and peaceful. The surrounding mountains created clouds that tempered the sun, making the November air cooler and much more comfortable than sunnier areas of Fiji. We hadn’t even made it to the city yet, but we already liked this place a lot.
(Full disclosure: Because our first visit to the yacht club was both cloudy and late in the afternoon, I have used some photos from a sunnier day in the yacht club gallery. The beer overlooking the lawn was real time, but there was no movie playing on the screen; Rich just thought that big white screen would look better with something on it. On the few occasions they did play a movie, you can rest assured it wasn’t Sharknado.)
When the yacht club’s restaurant opened we bee-lined right in for dinner. As yacht club eateries go, this was a casual and very appealing place with a wide variety of choices on the menu. I tried the tostada I’d heard about. British though this club may be, some sneaky American managed to have an influence at some point because this was the classic American version of a tostada, a tortilla bowl filled with Lawry’s-type seasoned ground beef, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, onion, etc. It was American comfort food and it was fabulous!
Of course they weren’t going to leave New Zealand out. In countertop jars, alongside the American chocolate chip cookies, were two of New Zealand’s favorite cookies: Afghans and Anzacs. Rich had acquired a strong liking for Afghans, and these were particularly good.
By now, even if we discovered we didn’t like the city of Suva, we could be happy living and eating at the yacht club. But based on some warnings we’d heard, we did decide to take some precautions while anchored in this harbor. They included locking up the boat when we left it, keeping the computer away from our open companionway overnight, and putting our outboard engine and dinghy up on deck every night. We have a place to put our outboard on the railing, and our dinghy actually serves as a cover for our forward hatch so we can leave it open when it rains. Suva is cooler than other areas of Fiji, but it’s still warm enough to warrant leaving hatches open overnight, and it sure is nice to have some cool air coming through that forward hatch even when it’s raining.–Cyndi
