With a young crew that includes single guys, nightlife is always appreciated and there’s not much of it on most islands. One notorious exception is the Beachcomber Resort on tiny Beachcomber Island. It’s apparently earned a bit of a reputation in Fiji and in the Pacific in general, so we decided to make a stop on our journey through the islands. We left Musket Cove, enjoyed a great dive just outside the entrance to the channel into Musket Cove, and then headed to Beachcomber. We arrived, contacted the island, and then tied up to a mooring as they had recommended. The mooring had a float so big that it looked like it was designed for a supertanker mooring. We finally managed to find a loop of line that we could slip one of our lines through and enjoyed a swim, a cool breeze, and the setting sun while we watched a couple of catamaran ferries stop near the island to pick up and drop off backpackers. The island is very small (a walk around it takes about 5 minutes) and the nearby water is too shallow for the large cats to land, so smaller launches ferry passengers between the island and the waiting boats.

Not a bad place to spend a day

The place didn’t quite live up to its reputation, but we did have a good time, made some friends, and survived another late night. Colin kept his camera out all night, so the next morning we were able to confirm that Colin had stooped from photojournalist to party photographer, Ash had managed to dance with nearly every woman present, and it was a rare moment when Lauren wasn’t on the dance floor.

The next day we went in to the dive shop to get a couple of our tanks repaired. We had one tank leaking after our first dive and fixed it at the Musket Cove dive shop by replacing the neck O-ring. Two other tanks that were new when we left the US showed the same problem on our second dive and we were able to fix them at the Beachcomber dive shop. After chatting with the guys at both shops and watching/helping with the work I was able to get all three fixed for essentially the cost of the tank fills we needed to test the fixes and get three spare O-rings as well.