Moonstruck's home waters. Board in St. Thomas, and by afternoon you're anchored off a national-park beach on St. John, with no border to cross all week.
Numbered on the chart and described below, roughly in the order you might sail them. Hover a name to find it on the chart.
Where the week begins. Moonstruck boards at Yacht Haven Grande Marina, a short taxi from the airport in the harbor of the territory's capital. The captain briefs you on Moonstruck's safety features and gets you underway.
The harbor is busy and best left the same afternoon. The first anchorage is under an hour away.
The classic first night: a sheltered cove on the west side of Great St. James, a short sail east of St. Thomas. Snorkeling starts straight off the swim platform, and the floating pizza kitchen anchored in the cove has become a Virgin Islands institution.
Minutes from Charlotte Amalie but a world away: a small crescent of sand on Water Island with a beach bar, beach chairs, and calm, clear water. An easy first or last afternoon when the flight schedule leaves half a day.
The first of St. John's national-park bays. Hawksnest is a favorite for an easy swim from the boat to a quiet beach. The beaches of Caneel Bay sit below the grounds of the old resort, a short dinghy ride from Cruz Bay's restaurants.
Trunk Bay is the postcard: white sand, a marked underwater snorkel trail along the cay, and the view from the road above that every visitor photographs. Cinnamon, next door, has a longer beach, water sports, and hiking trails up into the park.
Calm, shallow, and grassy underneath, which is why the turtles are here. A gentle anchorage for paddleboarding and a long swim, with a beach bar behind the sand at Maho and nothing at all behind Francis.
Some of the best snorkeling on St. John is around the little cay at the mouth of the bay, and the trail from the beach leads to the Annaberg sugar plantation ruins on the hill above it. Quiet at night, with Tortola's lights across the Narrows.
St. John's small, easygoing town: customs clearance on the return from the British Virgin Islands, then shopping, dining, and sundowners at the Windmill Bar with a view over the Sir Francis Drake Channel.
St. John's quiet east end: the mangrove-lined fingers of Hurricane Hole inside the national monument, and the laid-back harbor of Coral Bay beyond them, far from the crowds. A paddleboard morning, then lunch at a bar where the goats outnumber the tourists.
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.
Short sails, park moorings, and a customs dock: the practical side of a week that stays close to home.
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