Millseas Minute - BVIS - Getting There
- aribeiro17
- Feb 1, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 15, 2022
There are officially 58 days until we depart on another trip of a lifetime through Dream Yacht Charters off to island-hop throughout the BVIs. As I spent my morning, as an employee of the month - not doing my work but rather researching for our trip - I got excited for all of the amazing places that were in our future - making a list of "must-dos". I was pulled back to reality when I realized that I should probably no longer put off the last remaining thing to do in the planning of the trip - arrange a water taxi service.
I will say - getting to the BVIs for our trip this April has been such a process. Last year - when we did DYC's St. Martin trip it was easy - flights out of our local airport were affordable, direct, and then only a 35-minute ride to the marina where we departed. Simple, easy, efficient. The BVIs have been beyond the opposite and way more expensive than the trip to St. Martin. I think in the end - it'll be worth it based on everything the BVIs have to offer but for perspective, St. Martin was maybe $1,000pp before provisioning and island expenses; whereas BVIs is around $2,300pp. Quite a steep increase.
The Flights:
Dream Yacht Charters departs out of the Scrub Island marina. To get to Scrub Island you can either fly into Tortola/Beef Island (EIS) or St. Thomas (STT). We are traveling in a group of 6 - we live in Philly and the other couples live outside of Baltimore and Washington DC. Those are some major airports that you'd like transportation there would be easy - 2 destination airports - 3 departing airports - options should be abundant - right?! Wrong!
First off - availability was super limited. For our dates - a lot of planes were practically packed and supported the respective hefty price tag (I'm talking for a direct flight anywhere from $900+ for the most basic ticket - no reschedule - no cancellation flexibility). Through our research, we found that flying to St. Thomas (~400-600) was much more affordable than to Tortola ($850+). After much research, we finally found a flight from Newark, NJ (1.5-hour car ride from Philly) for an affordable $420 round trip ticket - but of course - too good to be true - the return flight was not great. We either had to depart at 11:35 AM to arrive back to Newark by 5:45 PM or all other later options but for us with 12+ hour layovers. After talking with many water taxis in the area, we learned that despite the possibility of an early wake-up time - we would not be able to make this flight departing from Scrub Island the morning of 4/9 as we would need to be declared at customs (BVI-> USVI) that opened at just didn't open earlier enough. So we ran through the next obvious options -we looked at departing on Sunday v. Saturday; Friday v. Saturday; departing Saturday and spending the night in Puerto Rico (where the layover was) - but there were no good options. Long story short - we wound up changing our charter to end on Friday rather than Saturday and booking an Airbnb in St. Thomas for Friday night to ensure we have enough time on Saturday to make it to the airport to catch that 11:35 AM flight. The answer seems simple and straight forward but a lot of time and research was involved in order to arrive at that option.
Getting to Scrub Island:
The fun wasn't over once we finally got our flights purchased. We still had to figure out how we were going to get from St. Thomas to Scrub Island. After much research there are really only a few options:
Charter plane from St. Thomas to Tortola. Take a taxi to Trellis Ferry Dock where you board a 10-minute ferry to Scrub Island. Round trip fares for Cape Air were around $587 per person (+ taxi fees + ferry from Tortola) - no thank you!
Charter a private water taxi from St. Thomas to Scrub Island. There are a bunch of different vendors that we did some research for. I will provide my quotes that I got - to assist you with vendor identification. This is based on a group of 6 and reflect round-trip fees! These fares do not include transportation from the airport to the marina and I will distinguish if the quote includes custom fees (fees to declare yourself at customs approximately $65 to arrive in the BVIs and $45 to the USVIs - since we are crossing jurisdictions).
DOLPHIN: $614pp - includes custom fees
ISLAND TIME: $410pp - includes custom fees - vendor sold out availability the fastest
OCEAN DREAMS: $375pp - includes custom fees *This is the vendor we went with*
SENSATION FERRIES: $380pp
BRADLEY POWERBOATS: Were fully booked - never got prices.
CHILLOUT CHARTERS & WATER TAXIS: $350pp - this was our 2nd choice vendor but unfortunately they booked up between us getting a quote and trying to book.
JOHNNY'S MARITIME SERVICES: $328pp - this was our 1st choice vendor but unfortunately they booked up between us getting a quote and trying to book.
The third option we knew would be the most affordable - taking the public ferry. Luckily there was a blog post on the Marriot's Scrub Island hotel website that gave us a lot of insight into the process. This would definitely be the longest but cheapest round - and as such made us choose between convenience and speed v. price. See the specifics below:
The ferry departs from Red Hook, St. Thomas at 12PM; 2PM and 4PM. Our flight arrived at 10:45AM and as such - we felt confident we'd be able to catch either the 12PM or 2PM ferry.
The ferry takes a little over an hour to arrive at Tortola. Upon departure at Tortola, you have to declare yourself at customs as you have now traveled from the USVIs to the BVIs. (PRO TIP: As you are approaching Tortola, gather by the exit to be first in line at customs v. your other ferry goers.)
After clearing customs, take a taxi (~$27 one way) to Trellis Dock where you will catch a ferry to Scrub Island. This ferry is 10-minutes long. It is complimentary for Marriott hotel guests but a fee is not listed for others (we were told it was complimentary from a vendor but will confirm). Enjoy a free rum punch or fruit punch for this final leg of the trip!
As shown above, we wound up booking with Ocean Dreams but it wasn't as simple as that. On 2/1/2022 regulation came out on the British Virgin Island Instagram notifying that the international ferry passenger schedule would no longer be published (see on the right ). Now that's published but not running. After that announcement, a truly private charter through Ocean Dreams would have come out to like $770pp - which is absolutely ridiculous. That fee would include land transport from the airport to the boat in St. Thomas; water taxi from St. Thomas to customs on the West End in
Tortola; and then water taxi through to Scrub Island. In order to lessen the cost - we decided rather than to take the water taxi from the West End in Tortola through to Scrub Island - we would arrange land transfer from customs to Trellis Bay and then take the 10-minute public ferry over to Scrub Island. This decreased the cost to $375pp (note: this is round trip fees and $120 is unavoidable custom costs). This essentially is the exact same route as the public ferry option just with a private water taxi to Tortola. As such, we compared the prices, to try to see if the additional cost was worth it. See the chart below:
We ultimately decided private charter because it catered a little more to us, we believed would be faster and offer more flexibility. Would we make the 12PM public ferry - we didn't know. So rather than waiting until the 2PM ferry - we have our own. Not to mention - the private boats are much smaller with much larger engines making the trip from St. Thomas to Tortola much faster - which just means vacation starts sooner. Ultimately - for $100 more - we chose convenience over money.
Putting It All Together
At the end of the day getting to Scrub Island isn't easy/ideal. Both my mother-in-law and the representative at Dream Yacht Charter said that flying into Tortola or St. Thomas and taxiing over to the BVIs will wind up costing around the same just with St. Thomas being more of a logistical funhouse. They - no surprise here - were right. I think in the end, flying into St. Thomas over Tortola, all in, saved us $200pp - which we will have to spend in transportation cost to Newark Airport which is about 1.5 hours from our house. In hindsight - I'm not sure if we would have booked in St. Thomas again. I think we would have bit the bullet and bought the $1,000 airline tickets from Philadelphia to Tortola and just avoided this logistical funhouse we now completed. In the beginning - it seemed like a no-brainer - $305 flight v. $1,000 flight - you pick the $305 one. But just shows how quickly things add up (305 + 383 + ~100 = 788). Now that being said $200pp is still $200pp and I can't wait to spend that on beers, sunshine, and exploring the BvIs - a destination we worked so hard to get to!
Curious to figure out how our trip went...click below:
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