Jost Van Dyke, BVI

[Kyle]We had planned to spend two nights leisurely enjoying the quiet anchorage at Prickly Pear. Since it turned out not to be so quiet after all, I decided to pull one last trick out of my sleeve that I was pretty sure would work for getting us some solitude.

Way back in 2009, when we were first in the BVI, we found a lovely, if somewhat exposed, anchorage on the "prohibited" (to charter boats) north side of Jost Van Dyke. This anchorage was not in any of our guidebooks, but we did have one old chart that had an anchor symbol in one of the bays.

Even better, the bay with the anchor symbol wasn't particularly good, so we moved down the coast for two more indentations before we found our own "secret" anchorage. With a rare forecast for a couple days of southeast winds, now was our chance to see if it was a good option.

Dolphins briefly joined us on our arrival at Saddle Bay

From the eastern part of Virgin Gorda, it was a half-day spinnaker run to the western end of Jost Van Dyke. When we came around the headland to our anchorage, we found it almost the same as we had left it. The rocky bay was still devoid of boats, but the undeveloped hillside above now had three houses in various stages of construction. Still, there were no paths and no chance that anyone was going to be building a road down to the beach anytime soon. We dropped the anchor and all of our chain on a deep patch of sand below and settled in for a dark, quiet night.

Maybe once or twice a day, we would see some intrepid charter boat going the long way around Jost Van Dyke for some time in the "real" ocean, no doubt wondering if the company that owns our boat knew that we were violating our contract by anchoring there. Apart from that and the occasional glimpse of a distant construction worker above, our world was just Begonia, the mountain and the sea.

Apart from the lovely solitude, the anchorage didn't turn out to be as great as we remembered. Firstly, we were unable to find any adorable squid to entertain us, and our local swims revealed the coral to be largely dead now and silted over, with a corresponding drop in fish diversity and population. We had a couple of reasonable days of being gently rocked back and forth in a low swell, but then the wind and waves swung back to their normal northeast orientation and the motion became decidedly uncomfortable. By the time we pulled up the anchor on the third morning, we were both dying to get out of there.

Snorkelling around the shallows at Saddle Bay wasn't as fun as we last remembered, but still gave us a few treats (We spotted several of the Eagle Rays, and smaller Southern Stingrays)

[Maryanne]Yost Van Dyke is known more for its beach bars (especially Foxy's), but we spent our time this visit on the isolated NW coast. Dolphins visited (briefly) daily, and Kyle even managed a short swim with them, but mostly it was a restful time with very little happening; a most wonderful break.

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Anchorage location (Saddle Bay, Jost Van Dyke) >> On google maps