In January of this year I went to St Thomas for my brothers wedding. We had a great time and the wedding was wonderful. For the honeymoon my brother and his new bride rented a sailboat and drove around the Caribbean for two weeks.
A couple months ago my brother asked if I’d like to do a sailboat trip with him and his wife.
I got an email today. He has a 2007 39’ Bavaria cruiser rented. My girlfriend and I are going to go so it will be 6 people, my brother and his wife and one other couple.
I am way excited. A week driving around the islands. My brother has a captain licence so there is no crew. Just us. My girlfriend is quite happy about the trip. I am gonna score massive boyfriend points for this one
It is also suprizingly affordable. It is ~ 1800 per person* including air, food and gas. Not a bad price to drive around paradise in your own boat for a week.
I am giddy as a schoolgirl. This is gonna rock.
Slee
*That is no where near what I thought one of those trips would cost. That estimate is on the hgih end. It is more, by a reasonable amount, than what I would normally want to spend on a vacation but…it is driving around the Virgin Islands in a sailboat.
Ahhh, Tortola…if you go to Cane Garden Bay, a lovely bay and beach, be forewarned that there’s this annoying thing my wife and I called The Unicloud. There’s a bit of a gap in the mountains above Cane Garden Bay, and a single-file line of clouds almost constantly goes though it. Of course, this was in the summer; it’s much drier in the winter.
I’ve done the exact same thing. There were 6 of us on a Beneteau 39. You’re lucky that it’s 3 couples, in our case we had to break the dining room table down into a bed each night. We basically sailed to a different island each day, did some snorkeling and then drank at the local bar at night. Slept aboard and had our own food on board.
We were there in January. Temps between 75-80F each day and maybe 65-70 at night. In the summer you may need an airconditioner aboard. We had good weather, no rain. One day was a dead calm and we ended up having to motor the whole day. Combined with using our diesel to charge batteries and run our radio we used approx $30 worth of fuel in a whole week. The wind is free of course.
Where you go is largely dependent on what you and your friends are wanting to do. There is a cool pirate ship bar off of Norman Island. There is a nice resort and small restaurant/hotel in the large bay of Virgin Gorda, just be careful getting in there, the channel is on the North side of the island, don’t try to squeeze in through the west side. There is also an outcropping of rocks and boulders on the extreme southern end of Virgin Gorda which offers some great snorkelling (or so I hear, when I was there the weather was too rough to drop anchor). There is a bar/restaurant/hotel off the northwest end of Tortola (called Marina Cay, I think).
If you’re fortunate enough to be there during a full moon, there are some pretty wild parties.
To echo plnnr, you absolutely must go to Jost van Dyke. There are 3-4 different places to drop anchor there and a cab service run by the locals to get you from place to place.
