The US Virgin Islands: a little slice of America floating in turquoise waters
It’s sort of mind blowing to sail thousands of miles away from home on the Chesapeake and then roll up on a little slice of America floating in turquoise waters. The US Virgin Islands (USVI) are a nice home base away from home for many cruisers and expats. It’s made up of three main islands—St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix—and many other smaller islands. You can get your US mail here. Locals speak English, they use the US dollar, but they do drive on the wrong side of the road.
St. Thomas, the hub of the US Virgin Islands
We arrived in Charlotte Amalie Harbor, St. Thomas, on a busy day, dodging cruise ships and ferries while looking for a place to anchor. Once anchored, taking our trusty dinghy between megayachts and cruise ships to find the dinghy dock was an object lesson in humility. We looked like a common cockroach crawling into a well-appointed home looking for a place to settle in. No need to lock the dinghy here; there are much better choices for someone to steal. The Charlotte Amalie dinghy dock does sit in the shadow of huge ships, but it’s one of the nicest dinghy docks we’ve encountered while cruising the Caribbean.
St. Thomas is the hub of the USVI with charter bases, first-class marinas, and services of every kind. You can walk a few steps off that dinghy dock and buy provisions, see a doctor, or enjoy a cruiser happy hour. A few more steps and you have loads of choices for shopping, seeing historic landmarks, strolling colonial alleys, or taking the easy and inexpensive “safari bus” system anywhere you need to go around the entire island. We had a long list of things that we needed to get done while on US soil, from filling prescriptions to getting paperwork sorted for the dogs. It felt good to check things off the list easily day by day.
St. James
After doing all the chores, we motored away from St. Thomas and grabbed a free mooring ball in the lee of St. James Island. This is the popular Christmas Cove that sits between St. John and St. Thomas, and it’s home to the famous pizza boat. Pizza Pi VI is run by a former cruising family. They know what sailors want. There’s nothing like being tucked in an ideal little cove with turtles swimming by and smelling homemade pizza. We kayaked over after breakfast to place an order, and we were treated to huge, delicious pizzas by dinner time. The kids spent their days snorkeling, swimming, and paddling. We even created a dinghy drive-in movie night.
St. John, one of the most beautiful places in the US Virgin Islands
From St. James, we sailed up to St. John, which we felt was the most beautiful place we’ve seen in the Virgin Islands. Two-thirds of the island is a national park, on land and sea. The National Park Service has a headquarters in Cruz Bay, and they maintain trails and mooring balls around the island. As we grabbed our first mooring within the park waters, a friendly volunteer dinghied up to hand us brochures and give us the lowdown on park rules.
We learned that they don’t yet have an online payment system for the mooring balls and that we would need to dinghy up to one of the many floating platforms, insert cash or a credit card number into a little envelope, and shove that into a tube on the bobbing payment float. With the brisk Christmas winds and a sporty north swell, this was a coordinated two-person effort that made me want to learn how to code and create an online system for the park.
We hopped from bay to bay within the park system and finally tucked into Francis Bay on the north side. This little protected bay, snuggled next to Maho Bay, was like a vacation brochure for the islands. The clear waters around our park mooring were alive with jumping fish and happy turtles. The beach was clean, uncrowded, and attached to several hiking trails to meander.
We hiked to some of the sugar plantation ruins scattered around the island. It’s easy to walk these paths and see the ruins as quaint and benign tourist attractions. But the story of the enslaved people who were forced to keep the sugar cane and rum trades moving is etched in the coral rock and stone structures still standing as grim reminders in this beautiful place. It’s a story of cruelty, exploitation, and huge profits. Millions, yes millions, of humans were kidnapped from their homes, taken away from their families, and treated inhumanely just to line the pockets of the privileged. It was a gut check and good reminder to not let the palm trees and blue water wash away the real history of these islands.
Dinghy Tip for St. John
One obstacle we faced in St. John while in park waters was the rule that dinghies cannot anchor or tie off to trees or rocks. You can drag your dinghy ashore and drag it back into the water. That may work well for small charter dinghies, but our big ugly beast is a 10-foot, double-floored RIB with a 25-hp, 4-stroke outboard. It’s a stretch for two adults to haul this thing up and down the beach. We struggled with it for a couple of days before another couple shared a solution with us: simple physics. We found a small fender and used it to roll the dink up and down the sand. It took a village the first couple of times we tried it, but once we got the hang of it, it became a life saver for getting ashore and still respecting park rules.
St. Croix
Unfortunately, we missed out on the deep historical roots of the third major island in USVI: St. Croix. The fickle weather kept us away from this place where Alexander Hamilton lived as a boy. St. Croix is more than 40 miles away from the other two islands and doesn’t provide as many natural harbors to tuck in to, making it the least visited by sailors of the group.
A little piece of home
Cruisers return to the USVI again and again. It’s low key, friendly to all kinds of sailors, and because it’s the US, Americans can stay as long as they want. We are so very lucky to have this little piece of home as a pit stop while exploring the Caribbean.
by Cindy Wallach
About the Author: Chesapeake sailor and longtime SpinSheet columnist Cindy Wallach is on an extended family cruise with her husband, two children, and two dogs aboard their St. Francis 44 catamaran Majestic.
