If you’re staying three days to a week or more on St. John, one of the best ways to spend a day is out on the water. You can keep it close, in and around St. John, or run across to the nearby British Virgin Islands. Either way, a day charter gets you to the coves, snorkel spots, and beach bars you can’t reach from shore.

What a day on the water looks like

A day charter is pretty simple. You’ve got a boat, a captain, and most of the day on the water, usually six or seven hours. If you’re staying on St. John, Cruz Bay is the main departure point. You head out in the morning, somewhere around 8 or 9, and you’re back by mid to late afternoon. In between, you make a few stops. A reef to snorkel, a beach to swim off, a bar you can only get to by boat.

White Bay, Jost Van Dyke, seen from the water, with the Soggy Dollar and Hendo's Hideout along the beach.
White Bay, Jost Van Dyke, from the water, the Soggy Dollar and Hendo's Hideout along the sand.

You can run the same kind of day out of St. Thomas, which has its own boats and departure points. I’ll cover the St. Thomas options in a separate piece.

Most operators run it two ways. A full day is about six and a half hours, roughly 8:30 to 3. A half day is closer to four, either the morning or the afternoon. Go full day if you’re crossing to the BVI or you want to fit in three or four stops. A half day is plenty if you want time on the water and still want the afternoon back on the island, and it costs less.

The nice part is you’re not managing a schedule. The captain reads the wind and the crowds and sorts out the order, and on a private boat you can tell them what you’re after. More snorkeling, more beach bars, whatever, and they’ll shape the day around it.

USVI, BVI, or both

This matters more than which boat you pick. St. John sits right on the line between U.S. and British waters, so you can spend the day in USVI waters, cross into the BVI, or do a bit of both. Plenty of trips snorkel a USVI cay in the morning, then run over to Jost for the afternoon.

Stay in USVI waters, and you don’t need a passport. These trips work the cays around St. John: Waterlemon Cay off Leinster Bay, the little chain of Lovango, Congo, Mingo, and Henley Cays, past Whistling Cay and into Hurricane Hole, or out to Christmas Cove where Pizza Pi, a floating pizza boat, is anchored. Lunch might be the beach club on Lovango, or Lime Out, the floating taco bar off Coral Bay. You’ll snorkel reefs and swim with turtles in the sea-grass bays that most people staying on-island never see, and you never leave the U.S.

Cross into the BVI, and you’re in another country for the day. This is the White Bay run: Jost Van Dyke and the Soggy Dollar, the reefs at Norman Island and The Indians, or the boulders at The Baths on Virgin Gorda. It’s the bigger day, and for a lot of people it’s the whole reason they wanted a boat. You’ll need a valid passport, and the boat clears British customs on the way over and U.S. customs on the way back. Plan for a little extra cost with the crossing: the BVI charges a customs and entry fee, usually around $75 to $80 a person on top of the boat, and there’s an online entry card (bviedcard.gov.vg) that your operator normally files for the group. A good charter walks you through all of it. Bring your passport, and it’s a non-issue. Forget it and the day’s over before it starts.

If it’s your first time down here and you want the postcard, cross to the BVI. If you’ve done the Soggy Dollar before, or you’d just as soon have a quieter day with less paperwork, the USVI cays are underrated and a lot less crowded.

The boats

It mostly comes down to a sailboat or a powerboat, and they make for pretty different days.

A powerboat gets you there faster and fits in more stops. Most are center consoles, quick and open; some are roomier boats better for a family or a bigger group.

A sailboat is its own thing; the sail is part of the day, not just how you get there. Slower and steadier, usually a bigger group, with plenty of shade and space. Kekoa, the catamaran with the black sails out of Cruz Bay, is a good example of how much one boat can cover: a full day across to Jost Van Dyke, a full or half day around the USVI cays off the north shore, or an evening sunset sail. Same boat, either side of the border, depending on the day you’re after. There’s a story behind Kekoa and those black sails, worth a look before you sail on her.

My wife and I did exactly this years ago on Kekoa, and it’s still one of my favorite days we’ve had down there. We left Cruz Bay in the morning and ran along the north shore, then stopped to snorkel off Mary Point for about an hour. Turtles, a manta ray, fish everywhere. From there we cut over to Soper’s Hole to clear customs, then crossed to Little Harbour on Jost, went ashore, and poked around Sidney’s Peace and Love and the shops strung along the water toward Harris’ Place. Then White Bay for the rest of the afternoon. It was an easygoing group, and floating off the beach in front of the Soggy Dollar was the most relaxing day of our week. Or it was, until the last day of the trip, when we did a second boat day that somehow topped it.

For that last day, we found a company, Copeland Charters, willing to run just the two of us over to Jost. Captain Ben met us at the customs dock and took us straight to clear immigration at Great Harbour, with a half hour to wander before the day got going. We popped into Foxy’s, where Foxy himself sang us a song and told a couple of jokes I won’t repeat. Then Ben ran us out to Sandy Spit, at the time the most beautiful place either of us had ever seen, a little sandbar you can circle on foot in a few minutes. We stayed an hour and a half, walking it and floating off the edge.

Sandy Spit, a small palm-topped sandbar off Jost Van Dyke, seen from the water before Hurricane Irma.
Sandy Spit, off Jost Van Dyke, before Hurricane Irma. It lost most of its trees in 2017; locals have been replanting since.

Ben’s next call was the Bubbly Pool on the north side of Jost. We had it completely to ourselves, and even though it wasn’t churning much, the walk in and the spot itself proved worth it. Then White Bay for the rest of the day. We anchored off, had lunch at One Love (since closed), and spent the afternoon floating off the back of the boat while Ben tossed us drinks from the cooler, the occasional Soggy Dollar mudslide mixed in. It was the perfect afternoon, and the day that topped the first.

The Bubbly Pool on the north side of Jost Van Dyke, surf pushing through the rocks into a natural pool.
The Bubbly Pool, Jost Van Dyke, surf pushing in through the rocks. Best with some swell running.

Copeland is gone now, both boats damaged in the 2017 hurricanes and the business never reopened. But plenty of outfits still run this same trip, Chill Out Charters and Cruz Bay Watersports among them, with many more to choose from.

Private or shared

The other choice is whether you take the whole boat or buy seats on one.

A shared trip puts you on a bigger boat with other people, at a per-person rate, usually somewhere around $165 to $220 for a full day to Jost Van Dyke with lunch, an open bar, and snorkel gear. A few run right out of the Westin instead of Cruz Bay, worth knowing if that’s closer to where you’re staying. You’re on someone else’s schedule and with someone else’s crowd, but you’re on the water, and the price is easy to swallow.

A private charter is the whole boat, your group, your day. The price covers a wide range. A half day on a small six-person boat starts around $500. A full USVI day runs roughly $750 to $1,050. A full BVI day starts near $1,400. And if you want a big crewed yacht with a real galley and a full bar, you’re looking at $2,900 and up, past $5,000 for the largest ones. It costs more, but you set the pace, the stops, and who’s aboard.

If you’re watching the budget, take the shared trip and don’t think twice; you’ll have a great day. If you’d rather have the boat to yourselves, book private, whether that’s just the two of you or a family or a group of friends. Split across a group, the per-person cost lands closer to the shared rate than you’d guess, and either way the day is entirely yours.

One more option, if you’re comfortable running a boat yourself: skip the captain and rent one, from a shop like Wharfside Watersports. Two different animals here. A small self-drive dinghy (around $245 for a half day, up to four people, no real experience needed) is good for hopping the north-shore beaches, Honeymoon, Hawksnest, Trunk, Cinnamon, Maho, and out to Waterlemon Cay, and you can pull it right up on the sand. A bigger self-drive boat like a Zodiac (around $495 to $750, up to eight, and you do need to be able to handle it) is what gets you around the whole island and out to the floating bars, Lime Out, Pizza Pi, Lovango, that the little dinghy can’t reach. The dinghy is for a lazy beach day on your own clock. The bigger boat is for people who want to run the coast themselves.

Where the boats go

Quick rundown of the stops, by which side of the border they’re on.

USVI (no passport):

Lime Out is worth calling out on its own. It’s a floating taco bar in the water off Coral Bay, swim-up service at little tables out on the water, first-come, no reservations. You anchor, swim over, and order tacos and a cocktail (the short-rib taco is the one everyone mentions). It’s boat-only, and it’s the kind of stop that makes the day feel like more than a boat ride.

BVI (passport required):

Before you book

Is it worth it

Two of my favorite days in the islands were both day charters off St. John: the Kekoa sail with an easygoing group of strangers, and the day Captain Ben ran just my wife and me on our last trip. If you get the chance on a St. John week, take one. It’s worth building in.

The view over White Bay to St. John from One Love bar, a catamaran anchored in turquoise water.
From One Love (now closed), the view back over White Bay to St. John, the anchor of the whole trip.

But here’s the honest part. This whole piece is about leaving the island for a day, and the island is the reason you came in the first place. St. John is the anchor, and it’s plenty on its own: the beaches, the Park, the slow pace of it. You don’t have to get on a boat to have a great week here. The boat is one great day. St. John is the rest of them.