Hawaiian Dancers Draw a Crowd at SeaFest

It is said that a mermaid can lure men to their deaths.

But it was the Hawaiian dancers who reeled in the crowds Saturday at Ventura Harbor Village’s first SeaFest, a two-day event designed to promote the city’s seaside shopping district and raise money for environmental groups. Sixty-seven-year-old Robert Bavaud of Oxnard was one of about a dozen men and boys who couldn’t help but join the scantily clad women on stage. As they tried to keep up with gyrating hips of the dancers, their friends and relatives teased them from the audience.

“He’s making a fool of himself,” said Donna Renard, an Oxnard resident and Bavaud’s friend. But that didn’t bother Bavaud. He stayed onstage for a solo. “I love Hawaiian and Polynesian music,” he said.

While the dancers captivated one crowd, hundreds of other residents and tourists milled along the waterfront, stopping to shop, listen to musicians playing everything from banjos to bagpipes, and to sample one of six clam chowders from local restaurants entered in the chowder cook-off.

“This is great,” said Barbara Brusseau of Westlake Village as she chowed down on chowder.

For $3, fair-goers could taste all six chowders and vote for their favorites. Proceeds of the contest went to Friends of Channel Islands National Park.

Brusseau declared the chowder from Alexander’s restaurant her favorite.

“I lived in Boston for two years, so I know my clam chowder,” she said. “This one is really, really creamy with just enough salt and pepper. It’s pure, traditional clam chowder.”

Most tasters agreed with her, voting it the winner.

A spicier blend from Frulatti’s restaurant took second place.

The nautical-themed festival also featured plenty for kids to do. Although frightened by the mermaid with a shimmering green tail, 2-year-old Mikael Boyer of Camarillo couldn’t be separated from two organizers dressed as dolphins who liberally dispensed hugs to children.

“Do you swim in the ocean?” she asked her new friends.

Nine-year-old Allen O’Brien was more taken with a collection of barn animals.

“I think it’s great because I’ve never seen a real llama or petted a chicken that didn’t run away,” he said.

But his 8-year-old brother, Tommy, couldn’t stop thinking of the magic show.

“It was cool,” he said. “[The magician] threw a bunch of ribbons and they turned into a dove.” The festival continues today from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.