At the onset of 2024, Skift reported that the luxury travel boom would continue through the rest of the year. To take that a step further, the travel industry news site went on to highlight a handful of trends that it believed would “shape luxury travel,” among them intimate, small vessel cruises.
“Private yacht charters are a fast-emerging luxury travel category for small groups of friends or families,” the report noted, based on booking trends provided by Virtuoso, a global network of luxury travel advisors. “Virtuoso travel advisors see new and experienced cruisers booking these ‘less-crowded, upscale voyages.’”
While I am a staunch adversary of commercial cruises (you can find plenty of evidence of that in my work), I have always loved boats and being out on the water. Whether it’s a pontoon at a bachelorette party, a booze cruise on the Hudson or my dad’s Boston Whaler on Lake George, I am, at all times, ready and willing to be out on a boat. It should come as no surprise, then, that I would find the idea of a small vessel cruise attractive.
I wasn’t prepared for how attractive until I went on a 5-day, 10-person catamaran trip around the British Virgin Islands with The Moorings — a premier yacht charter company with a fleet of over 400 yachts across more than 20 destinations around the globe. More than half of those vessels — 254, to be exact — occupy the British Virgin Islands, as they have done since 1969, making it the largest fleet in those waters and an apt place for me to dip my toes into the metaphorical private-yacht-charter pool.
Now, having done it, will I ever vacation any other way for the rest of my life? Given budgetary constraints, yes, though left to my own devices I would not.
Of course, I’d be lying if I said I had no reservations prior to boarding our schooner — a 58-foot vessel named Laurel Lee. As someone who (regrettably) hasn’t spent an exorbitant amount of time aboard yachts in their life, I struggled to see how 10 people would coexist comfortably on a catamaran for an almost-week. Ten people who, I might add, were not close friends or family members.
Those reservations dissipated immediately upon boarding. First, because I think being in the British Virgin Islands tends to have that effect on people, but also because 58-foot yachts breed comfort, and, as it turns out, close friendships, too.
My rendezvous with The Moorings starts out with a direct, four-ish hour flight from New York to St. Thomas. From there, we take a taxi to Red Hook, the Easternmost end of the island (a 30-40 minute drive), where we then board a high-speed, private water taxi which takes us directly to The Moorings marina. A bit of a schlep, but I’m told it’s about as VIP as it gets in the islands. They have Carib on the water taxi so I’m hardly suffering.
Upon arrival at The Moorings’s marina, we’re greeted with welcome cocktails and bites by our three-person crew before stowing our shoes for the week. It’s too late in the day to sail to Anegada — the first planned island visit — so instead we head to The Bight at Norman Island, an island at the southern tip of the British Virgin Islands archipelago, where we snorkel the caves at the base of the cliffs, catch the first of many mesmeric sunsets and, eventually, depart for Willy T — a seedy floating bar and restaurant. There are, inexplicably, tons of other people there, and the vibe is electric. We’ve only been in the BVIs a few hours but have accomplished what feels like a full day’s worth of activities. We go to sleep sun-kissed and brimming with excitement for what the next few days are sure to hold in store.
The next morning, we’re up early and on our way to Anegada. The breakfast spread, laid out by our personal chef for the week, Chef Kay, is unparalleled. (More on that later.) Bloody Marys are consumed on the trampoline shortly thereafter. All in all, it takes us around two and a half hours to get to Anegada, though it becomes abundantly clear almost immediately that being in transit is half the fun. (And that island time is very real.)
Anegada, for its part, is a virtually deserted island, save for a smattering of beach bars, restaurants and hotels. We’re shuttled from The Lobster Trap to its sister property, Anegada Beach Club. We grab a Piña Colada before heading to the beach where we see, and this is no exaggeration, zero other people. Later, we have our only on-shore dinner of the week at Anegada Reef Hotel, known for their lobster dinner.
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For a vacation devoid of any evidence of human lifeThe next few days hold much of the same. We make stops at Virgin Gorda where we explore The Baths, a unique rock formation on the southern tip, which we traverse in only our swimsuits, and Cooper Island where we trade sips at the Cooper Island Beach Club Rum Bar. We sail to North Sound where we indulge at Bitter End Yacht Club and, from there, Saba Rock. Highlights include a pit stop at Sandy Spit, a tiny and otherwise unremarkable island save for the fact a Corona commercial was filmed there, and another at Jost Van Dyke, home to The Soggy Dollar, where the Painkiller is said to have originated and which you have to swim to get to. We eat, we drink tiki cocktails, we jump off the back of the boat, we swim, we read, we learn to expertly spot sea turtles, we drink some more, and one of us (not me) writes. Rinse and repeat. I am so deeply immersed in this trip that it takes me no time at all to lose all sense of time and, even more notably, stop checking my email.
But the luxury of being in the BVIs, albeit beautiful, feels almost secondary to the experience that is living on Laurel Lee for nearly a week. The food and beverage program on board is second to none, and rivals even that of even the most prestigious of hotels. It’s an all-inclusive vacation, so the meals — which are tailored to guests’ personal tastes and dietary restrictions — and the fully stocked bar are all included. For the entirety of our stay, we want for nothing. We enjoy three robust meals a day, which means fruit and French toast, seafood pasta dishes, tacos, fresh mahi mahi and ahi tuna, burgers and jerk chicken, among other things. Everything, right down to the tortillas and the buns, are made from scratch on the boat. We sip all kinds of wine, BBCs (Banana, Bailey’s, Coconut) and Aperol spritzes. Before I’ve even decided what it is that I want at any given moment, it’s been placed firmly in my hand.
It is, in every sense, the perfect vacation. I love small vessel cruises, and I never want this one to end.
Alas, at the inescapable conclusion of the week, my fellow seafarers and I find ourselves reluctantly exchanging goodbyes at the airport, with promises to meet up for tiki drinks in New York before the end of the summer. No one says it out loud, but we all know that wherever we see each other next won’t hold a candle to where we’ve just been. At least we’ll always have had this, though — five days on a catamaran on the British Virgin Islands, together.
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