Sixty islands and cays around a sheltered channel, with an anchorage for every mood: a floating bar at Norman Island, the boulders of the Baths, the lagoon at North Sound, and Anegada's lobster at the far end.
Numbered on the chart and described below, roughly in the order you might sail them. Hover a name to find it on the chart.
The gateway to the British Virgin Islands: we clear in with customs and immigration here, then lunch on the waterfront among the pastel shops before carrying on into the channel. A deep, sheltered harbor with the ferry to St John on its doorstep.
The island said to have inspired Treasure Island, and still the most fun night in the islands. Snorkel the Caves at the western point, jump from the deck of the Willy T, the floating bar anchored in the Bight, and go ashore for dinner at Pirate's Bight on the beach.
Four rock pinnacles rising out of the sea between Norman Island and Pelican Island, ringed by coral in less than 30 feet of water. Not an overnight anchorage but the snorkel stop everyone remembers, and usually on the way to somewhere else.
A long white beach on the north shore of a mostly private island, facing Tortola across the channel. Calm water for swimming and paddleboarding, a short walk over the hill for the view, and quiet at night.
A one-beach island with a beach club, a rum bar, and turtles grazing in the seagrass under the moorings. An easy stop on the way up the Sir Francis Drake Channel, and a favorite for dinner ashore under the palms.
The RMS Rhone went down off Salt Island in the hurricane of 1867 and is the Caribbean's best-known wreck dive. The bow lies in 80 feet of water; the stern is shallow enough to snorkel over from the dinghy.
Giant granite boulders piled along the shore, forming grottoes, tunnels, and sea-filled pools to swim and scramble through on the trail to Devil's Bay. Spanish Town is a short way up the coast, for dinner ashore at CocoMaya.
A great sheltered lagoon at the top of Virgin Gorda, with the Bitter End Yacht Club, Saba Rock, Leverick Bay, and the beach on Prickly Pear all a dinghy ride apart. Flat water for paddleboarding, docks to step ashore from, and the place for an evening that calls for a celebration.
The outlier: a flat coral island ringed by reef, a three-hour sail north of everything else and unlike anywhere else in the group. Anchor at Setting Point, rent a vehicle for the empty beaches at Loblolly Bay and Cow Wreck, and come back for lobster dinner ashore at the Lobster Trap.
Tortola's best-known beach: a long curve of sand with beach bars, music in the evening, and the Callwood rum distillery a short walk inland. Downwind from Anegada, it makes a relaxing landfall after the longest sail of the week.
White Bay is the beach of the Soggy Dollar Bar, where the Painkiller was invented and where you still swim ashore to pay for it. Great Harbour, next door, is Foxy's. Sandy Spit and the Bubbly Pool are a short hop east for the morning.
A tiny island anchorage at the eastern end of Tortola, with a beach and a bar on the cay, and Trellis Bay next door with its artists' studios and the fireball sculptures that burn at the full-moon party. Handy for guests joining or leaving through Beef Island airport.
The chart above and each inset open onto a satellite view of the same water: drag the divider across it. Coastline from OpenStreetMap. Imagery is Sentinel-2 cloudless by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2019), used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; and aerial photography flown in 2018 for the USGS and USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program, which is public domain. The open sea is toned to match the chart. None of it is for navigation.
The channel, the trade winds, and the clearance stops: the practical side of a British Virgin Islands week.
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