St. John and the USVI Park – Part I

By B.J. | Published December 23, 2012
Are you sure you wouldn’t rather hear about grocery shopping in St. Thomas?
I’m going to skip right over our return to Road Town and our “business” visit to St. Thomas.  I suppose I could regale you with the exciting powdered milk we found (actually tastes like milk!) or stories of hunting for the Home Depot and seeing some of the seedier parts of Charlotte Amelie…but why, when I have beaches, sea turtles, hiking trails and beauty to talk about?
We struck out from St. Thomas (actually nearby Water Island) hoping to make St. Croix.  It sounded like it was worth a visit, but the weather called for  20-25 knot winds and 8-10 foot seas which would make for a fast but rough 35-40 mile trip.  Given our experience we knew we could handle it, however we shortly realized we didn’t have to sail in these conditions willingly so we turned for St. John instead.  Maybe some day we will get to St. Croix, we got closer than the last time I didn’t make it there.

Heading for St. John we made for Rendezvous Bay on the South side of the island.  It’s one of the last bays before the National Park, where you can not anchor.  When we got close we were surprised that there were no boats there at all.  Wondering why, we tucked in and anchored.  As it turns out the reason was that some of that slop and swell we were getting in the open water seemed to make it around the corner into the bay.  We spent a night there with some rock-and-roll, but we slept and there was a pair of sea turtles swimming near the boat that kept us amused for some time though we didn’t get off the boat as there wasn’t really any place appealing to land.

Sunset in Cruz Bay

Leaving the empty Rendezvous Bay for something with less motion and more to do, we headed for Caneel Bay, which is right around the corner from the town of Cruz Bay.  We’d hoped to be near Cruz Bay to pick up some information about park and explore the town. 

We like Cruz Bay a lot.  It’s a much smaller town than St.Thomas and doesn’t have that icky feel of St. Thomas where the locals seem to be constantly huckstering the cruise ship visitors.  Or maybe I’m a sucker for all the competitive happy hours available in the cool little bars all over town – sell me a drink for a buck and I’m yours.  But the town does have some nice shops and restaurants, and we had a pleasant visit and a nice meal there.  We even saw wild donkeys in the town baseball field, much to the children’s amusement (“the outfielder better watch where he steps…”) and iguanas loose in the town.


The USVI National Park has a whole system of mooring buoys throughout the park which are reasonably priced at $15 per night with an honor pay system.  While we normally avoid paying to stop the boat whenever possible this system works for us.  It’s better for the coral and the wildlife, since anchoring is either prohibited or at least very strongly discouraged in most places and careless anchoring is one of the many causes of reef destruction.  Also the revenues are used to maintain the park and facilities, some of which are quite nice.

Trunk Bay is considered one of the world’s most beautiful beaches, and not without reason – it is.  There is also an underwater snorkeling trail and very good snorkeling there.  I saw my first shark in the open water swimming in from the dinghy – a four foot nurse shark, and the whole area is just stunning.  We picked up a mooring for the night (one of only three in this spot) and it was worth the stay.

It’s not easy to convey just quite how close all of these places are – a trip from Caneel Bay to Trunk Bay for example is a trip of only about two miles.  We are quite literally cove hopping, and in some cases Will has taken the Portland Pudgy and sailed to the next anchorage in the little eight foot dinghy while we move the big boat.  But they each a bit different in feel.

Sugar factory ruins

St. John offers many miles of hiking trails in addition to the beautiful anchorages and reefs.  On some of these trails are ruins to explore of various homes, agricultural and industrial efforts over the last few centuries.  We would be remiss to skip them – our next planned stop was Cinnamon Bay where we could easily pick up some of the park trails and do some hiking.  This was to only be a day stop, with a move along for the night to Maho Bay further along the North Coast.  I’ll pick up from Cinnamon Bay in the next post…

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