One of the fun things about high season on St. John is watching the magayachts cruise through the waters. Yes, these yachts are excess at its finest, but they’re still pretty cool to look at. I saw a few neat ones this week. Here are the details…
I spent a few hours over at Maho Bay last Tuesday for “work” purposes of course. 🙂 I was checking out the gorgeous yachts and sailboats that were anchored offshore when one in particular stood out – the Necker Belle. Anyone know who this might belong to? Well none other than Sir Richard Branson. It’s pictured above on the right. The other sailboat in the picture was super cool and rather large too. So sorry, but I can’t recall the name of it – oops!
At 105-feet long, the Necker Belle is one of the few luxury sailing catamarans in the world. Was Sir Richard Branson on it the other day? Well I’m not too sure about that as it’s offered as a charter from his Necker Island resort. But you just never know. Here’s another random fact: I was at the Soggy Dollar – I think it was last year, if not it was late 2013 – and I started chatting it up with a large group of people on the beach. It turned out that they were the first group of people who had paid for a ride on Virgin Galactica, Richard Branson’s planned commercial spaceline. Pretty neat.
On Friday, I work up to see a HUGE yacht anchored off of Cruz Bay. I did a little research and learned that this megayacht was named Talisman C. This incredible yacht is more than 210 feet in length. The Sadie Sea just happened to be cruising by as I was taking pics of the Talisman C. This image illustrates just how large the Talisman C is, as it dwarfs the 40-foot Sadie Sea.
The Sadie Sea and the Talisman C
Here’s a closer pic taken last year by John Brandi:
Photo credit: Captain John Brandi
Just as I was about to head home, another huge sailboat sailed right past Gallows Point. This one, called Rosehearty, was 184-feet in length and used to be owned by Rupert Murdoch. He sold it last year for nearly $30 million.
Rosehearty
I’m sure we’ll be seeing some more cool yachts sail through these waters this winter. We’ll let you know if we see any that are exceptionally cool.
Who needs a little warm up? Many of you, I’m sure! We’d like to help you out a bit today by taking you bar hopping through the US and British Virgin Islands.
Linda Marsciano is a reader of News of St. John. She’s also a contributing editor at Conde Nast’s site Jaunted. She recently put together a list of the 12 best beach bars in the US and British Virgin Islands. Take a few minutes and go through them all. Then let us know how many you have been to. We’d also like to know if there are any you think they may have missed. Let us know in the comments section or over on our Facebook page…
The 12 Best Beach Bars in the U.S. and British Virgin Islands
The U.S. Virgin Islands and the nearby British Virgin Islands are made for island-hopping via ferry, sailboat or private charter. But oftentimes, island-hopping in these parts is really just code for bar-hopping. #dontjudge
Here’s a list of our favorite beach bars to hit. Some are oldies but goodies, while others are a bit newer to the scene.
Owned by Foxy’s oldest son Seddy, the sign outside reads “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Clothes, No Problem,” which pretty much sums up Jost Van Dyke, dubbed the Barefoot Island. Seddy woos customers with his magic tricks while his wife Raquel tends bar. Open until sunset, the clientele can move over to dad’s joint for after-dark fun.
Home to one of the best New Years Eve parties in the world, Foxy’s in Jost Van Dyke is also a pretty cool place the other 364 days of the year. Foxy is famous in these parts, and if you’re lucky he’ll be around to tell some of his legendary tales. Bring a business card and staple it to one of the wooden rafters to memorialize your visit.
This is quite literally a shack in Tortola known for its wild Full Moon parties and “mushroom tea,” but it’s also in a perfect position for watching surfers on Apple Bay during the day. Ladies are welcome to hang their undergarments on the walls before leaving if they’re into that sort of thing (which we’re not but don’t judge those who are).
How many of you would like to have your own private beach on the North Shore while only paying $400 a night? I know I would! Well we’re all in luck as a great new place just hit the rental market. Here are the details…
Perched on the hillside 20 yards above pristine Peter Bay Beach in the heart of the Virgin Islands National Park, the Suite on the Beach boasts one of the most idyllic locations on all of St. John. Sugar white sand beaches and crystal clear turquoise waters are at your doorstep from this private one-and-a-half-acre beachfront property. The Caribbean views from Peter Bay beyond Whistling Key to Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands are simply magnificent.
This private one-bedroom suite features fantastic ocean views, a four-poster mahogany bed in the AC’d bedroom, a full modern kitchen and a large outdoor tiled deck complete with hammock, dining area and barbeque. The suite consists of the lower portion of a traditional Caribbean home and possesses an authentic old world tropical feel, surrounded by lush gardens and emerald green hills. The property owners live onsite in the completely separate upper portion of the house and are available to assist with anything you may require. They also happen to own the Cruz Bay Boutique Hotel, so they know a thing or two about creating tasteful accommodations and great customer service.
Private beach chairs and snorkel gear are provided for your use down at Peter Bay Beach, which is accessed via a private, paved path on the property. There is excellent snorkeling at the coral reef right in front of the house.
The gated community of Lower Peter Bay is St. John’s most prestigious location, boasting numerous luxury homes and vacation rentals. The suite is located between two of the world’s most beautiful beaches, Trunk and Cinnamon, both of which are just a one minute drive or five minute downhill walk away. The restaurants, shopping and nightlife of Cruz Bay are all within a 15 minutes drive. During the day, soak up the sun, sand and waves from this very private beachfront location. At night, listen to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach and the tree frogs’ serenade while gazing at the bounty of bright stars in the sky. Relax at this nature lover’s paradise. And again, the best part – it’s only $400 a night.
Whose New Year’s resolution was to get in better shape this year? Well if that sounds like you and if you’re lucky enough to be on St. John at some point this year, you’re in luck because a great new gym is set to open within the next few weeks.
Rock Fitness is located right in the heart of Cruz Bay beside Driftwood Daves. It is being opened by Brenda Simpson, owner of a great clothing boutique in town (more to come on that soon), and Wayne Campbell, owner of the Barefoot Cowboy Lounge. The gym will have everything from free weights to cardio machines to a bar … yes, a bar! (We’ll have more on that too soon…)
Rock Fitness will be open Monday through Saturday from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The monthly fee is $65 per person. A discounted rate of $120 a month will be offered for two people living in the same household. Any additional people living in the same household will be charged $55 a month. For those of you visiting the island short term, Rock Fitness will daily passes for $10 and a five day pass for $35.
Rock Fitness is holding an open house party this Friday from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. for anyone who wants to stop by and check out the space. There will be food from Driftwoods Daves and Barefoot Cowboy, giveaways and even a keg of beer on tap!
Last January, we shared with you a fun family video made by 12-year-old Sophie Nosek Nosek family. Well Sophie’s a year older now, and she’s at it again. Check out this fun little video she made of her recent family trip to St. John. It’s set to Kenny Chesney’s Life on a Rock, and we’re pretty sure you’re going to like it.
And for those of you who missed Sophie’s first video. Here’s Be As You Are:
I’m always looking for something new and exciting to do on island. Believe it or not, sometimes the beach gets “old.” Don’t get me wrong, I love, love, love having my toes in the sand (and a cold drink in my hand!). But there are definitely times when I’d rather do something different. That desire recently led me over to Coral Bay, to the Carolina Corral.
The Carolina Corral opened back in 1993 with just two donkeys. Since then it’s expanded to include more than two dozen animals including, goats, chickens, ducks and dogs. All of the animals have either been rescued or were no longer wanted by their owners, according to corral owner Dana Bartlett. In addition to caring for the animals, Dana also offers horseback riding on trails in Coral Bay. I recently went out with her and had the opportunity to take a nice little ride.
(Disclaimer: I am not a horseback riding girl at all. I used to ride a bit here and there as a child, and after riding a horse that was more interested in climbing up a rocky mountain than meandering along a nice flat little trail, I vowed I’d never do it again. Fortunately Dana was able to coax me back on.)
Our day started over at the corral where Dana works tirelessly to care for more than a dozen animals. Between the feedings, the cleanings and the overall maintenance, it’s hard to believe Dana ever gets a break. So I felt extremely fortunate when she agreed to take some time out of her day to introduce me to the animals. And as I mentioned, she was even able to get me to hop on one of the horses. We took a nice little stroll down the road and were able to see beautiful views of Coral Bay from a perspective I had not seen before. The horses were very docile and I truly enjoyed my ride.
Our horses really seemed to enjoy each other 🙂
As were were trotting along, I asked Dana what it was like to run the corral.
“People got to wonder how I do it,” Dana said. “The day becomes night with the time not being sorted out on hours and minutes, but what needs to be done that day with the energy I have left. I pretty much spend 12 hours here and 12 at home. I’m still working toward making it a more viable place overall.”
“I had a couple tell me they’re glad I’m here and it’s always good too see my repeat customers,” Dana continued. “I like to think of myself as an relatively unchanging fixture here doing the best I know how.”
And in my opinion, Dana is doing a tremendous job, especially given how costly it is to care for the animals.
Dana offers rides Monday through Saturday. She offers a one-hour ride at 10 a.m. and a one-and-a-half hour ride at 3 p.m. Hour rides cost $75 while the longer ride costs $85. Children ages six through 12 receive $10 off. Children under the age of six are not permitted to ride. Private rides for up to five people are also available.
For those not interested in riding, the corral also accepts visitors as well as donations to help care for the animals.
The Carolina Corral is located on Centerline Road just past Skinny Legs. Take a right at the Carolina Corral sign just past Skinny Legs and the corral will be down the road a bit on your right.
You can learn more about the Carolina Corral by visiting its website at www.horsesstjohn.com. You can also contact Dana directly at [email protected] or by phone at (340) 693-5778.
Beautiful Morning is one of the great auction items being offered by the ACC.
There’s another great online auction happening, and this one’s set to benefit the Animal Care Center. For those of you unfamiliar with the Animal Care Center (ACC), it’s an amazing organization that supports the island’s homeless cats and dogs. It also happens to be the place where I adopted Charlie, News of St. John’s now famous mascot.
The ACC auction is happening now and will continue through January 23rd. Here is a list of available items as of January 4th:
A seven-night stay at The Greenhouse Villa
A four-night stay at A Beautiful Morning at Grande Bay
A full day BVI charter on Blue Mystic Charters
A three-night stay at Seaside at Grande Bay
A four-night stay at Bolongo Bay on St. Thomas
A three-night stay at Serendip Vacation Condos
A two-night stay at Scrub Island Spa & Marina in the BVI
A full day charter on Seashell Boat Charters
A silver shipwreck coin from 1715 courtesy of Freebird Creations
A seven-night stay at Wild Creek Lodge in Colorado
A seven-day Jeep rental courtesy of Mr. Piper’s Jeeps
A three-night stay at Forsyth Park House in Savannah, Georgia
Dinner for two at Saba Rock Resort
A full day charter with Triumph Outdoor Adventures
One free pass for Gumption’s Necker Island Nature Tour
A three-night stay at the Combsberry Inn in Maryland
A full day charter to Jost Van Dyke with Rockhoppin’ Adventures
A seven-night stay for two at Sapphire Village
A family photo shoot by Yelena Rogers Photography
A sunset cruise on Pirate Girl Charters
A day sail on Awassa
A two-person snorkel sail on Island Spirit with Cruz Bay Watersports
A frames print courtesy of Old Mango
A snorkel and sunset sail with Virgin Magic Charters
A seven-nght stay at Hotel Mono Azul in Costa Rica
A two-night stay at String of Pearls
A three-night stay at Frenchman’s Reef on St. Thomas
A two-night stay at Lavender Hill
A Parents’ Night Out Package that includes three hours of babysitting, toy/equipment rental, dinner & drinks.
Additional items are expected to be listed, so please check back often.
Does anyone have a few million I could borrow … because I just found the villa of my dreams!!
Deja View is an incredible six bedroom, six bathroom Caribbean villa that has 180-degree ocean views. Privately nestled on the hillside on the island’s South Shore, high above Rendezvous and Klein bays, this home was truly built with entertaining in mind. It has probably one of the coolest features I have ever seen in an island home – an 800 square foot bunk/game/media room. We’re going to let the pictures speak for themselves on this one. You have to check this out…
Let’s start outdoors…
How about inside where even the bathrooms are cool…
Now for some entertainment areas…
Did you see those bunks?! How very cool!! I’m not sure it gets much cooler than this house. Who’s the new lucky owner going to be??
Want to see more? Check out this video…
Deja View is being offered by RE/MAX Island Paradise and is listed at $4.95 million. You can learn more about Deja View by visiting Island’s Paradise’s website www.ReMaxStJohnRealEstate.com or by contacting realtor Diana Beam at [email protected].
Happy 2015 everyone!! Yesterday, over on our Facebook page, we asked you what your New Year’s resolution for 2015 was. Overwhelmingly, the response was to visit St. John. So today, we thought we’d take a few minutes to help you reach that goal. Here are a few deals we found…
How does a free night on St. John sound? Pretty great, right? Well our friends over at Cimmaron St. John are offering a great deal for the month of January – book a six night stay at one of their condos or villas, and you will automatically receive the seventh day free. That can potentially be a savings of a couple of hundred dollars to several hundreds of dollars. Not to shabby if you ask us! But here’s the catch, your stay must begin during the month of January. So you have to act fast. We did a quick glimpse of their January availability and there are some great opportunities. Click here to visit Cimmaron’s website to learn more.
Catered To also has some great deals, but again, these are for stays during the month of January only. Looks like it’s time to start shopping for airfare! We’ll get to that in a bit. But back to Catered To’s specials… They’re offering 25 percent off of three villas – Blue Tang, Beach Garden and Casa Coram Deo. They’re also offering 20 percent off of 12 villas – Mango Bay, Villa Panache, Avalon, Casa Mare, Crystal Seaview, Francis Bay Estate, Island Sun, Caneel Trailside Cottage, Latitude and Solaris. Click here to visit Catered To’s website to learn more.
Seaview Homes is also offered two deals. They’re offering 10 percent off of Southern Exposure and Sea Blossom for select weeks in January. Click here to visit Seaview Home’s website to learn more.
You’re going to need airfare too, right? Well we’ve found some ridiculous deals for six night, seven day stays during the month of January. How does $317 roundtrip, nonstop from JFK sound? Too good to be true, right? Well it’s not. If you fly on Delta on January 22, 28, 29, or 30, you can score this deal. See for yourself:
Here’s a sampling of some more more airfare deals we found for the month of January…
Boston: $333 for roundtrip, nonstop on JetBlue. We only found this deal for travel on January 29th.
Miami: $427 for roundtrip, nonstop on American. This is good for travel on January 22, 27, 28 and 29.
Dallas: $428 for roundtrip with one stop on Spirit. This is good for more than a dozen dates.
Chicago: $453 for roundtrip with one stop on American/Seaborne. This is good for several dates during the month of January.
So, couple the specials being offered on island with the relatively low airfare, and it looks like many of your New Year’s resolutions can become reality! We wrote about ways to score the best airfare back in 2013. The info still holds true. Click here to read our tips on finding the best airfare.
You can also visit our Island Information page for more information on villas, villa management companies, hotels, Jeep rentals and more. You can click here to do so, click the Island Information tab at the top of this page or visit www.NewsofStJohn.com/IslandInformation. Happy travel planning!
I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again … I cannot believe 2014 is coming to a close. It’s been a great year both on island and here at News of St. John. Here’s a little recap of what happened on our favorite little island throughout the year:
The first major story of 2014 was the reopening of Cafe Roma after a fire destroyed the restaurant in April 2013. We were excited to dine in one of our favorite restaurants once again, and the food was just as delicious as we remembered! In other food news, a few of the owners over at Rhumb Lines announced their intentions to open a new restaurant in the space that once housed Donkey Diner in Coral Bay. The restaurant was delayed a bit, but Indigo Grill finally opened just last week. (Stay tuned to News of St. John for more information on that in the New Year…) There was also a pretty amazing yacht sighting in January when Venus cruised through the waters around St. John. Venus is the megayacht that Steve Jobs was building prior to passing away. And finally after months of false promises, work FINALLY began on the section of Centerline Road that was washed out years ago.
Image credit: Captain John Brandi
The US Virgin Islands gained an amazing new anthem in February when Pressure released his new tune Virgin Islands Nice. To this day, I simply cannot get enough of that song. The video is pretty amazing as well and featured shots from St. John, St. Thomas and St. Croix. Next up was the 18th annual 8 Tuff Miles race. It was a pretty rainy and soggy day, but that didn’t stop more than 1,000 runners, including Mr. News of St. John, from running 8.3 miles from Cruz Bay to Coral Bay. Just over a week later was the Super Bowl. How did St. John celebrate, you ask? Well it did so in the dark as a rolling outage hit the island during the first quarter. Luckily it didn’t last too long.
We started April off with a bang with the best April Fools’ Day joke ever! After months of hearing about two new passenger ferries, yet not seeing either on island, we came up with a pretty good April Fools’ Day joke. We decide to make up a silly story about how Captain John Brandi, then the owner of Palm Tree Charters, was planning on renting one of the new ferries to create an express booze cruise of sorts from Cruz Bay straight to the Soggy Dollar. We even got the Soggy Dollar crew in on the fun. You all seemed to love it and many people believed us! Now here’s a little secret that Captain John Brandi and I have kept to ourselves since last April… A certain country star who happens to have a house on island read the story, believed it and asked to charter the boat for a Jost trip for his music buddies … I almost died when I found out!! The actual ferry did in fact make its first appearance in Cruz Bay later that month.
There were three pretty major announcements that happened in June. The first, and definitely the most controversial, was the announcement that a McDonald’s was set to open in Cruz Bay. It took a little digging, but we soon learned that it was simply a drunken rant that one local thought would be funny to post on Craigslist after a fun night out on the town. Not everyone found it to be amusing, but we certainly did! Next up was the announcement that a major country music fest was in the works, which left everyone wondering would would be on the lineup. And lastly, we had a pretty major announcement of our own … St. Johnopoly! I’m sure you know the story by now, but what started as a tipsy little conversation over drinks between myself and the Sadie Sea turned into a pretty fabulous board game. A HUGE thanks to everyone who has purchased one!!
August was relatively quiet other than Tropical Storm Bertha making a brief appearance on island. Fortunately there was little damage, and everyone made the best of it including the boys over at Castaways. (Sorry folks but you must be logged in to Facebook to watch this video…)
September was another banner month for us here at News of St. John. After months of anticipation, St. Johnopoly finally arrived!! It essentially turned my home on island into a storage facility and my stateside home into Amazon.com. It was all worth it though, but it turned out so cool! We also adopted out beloved little Charlie from the Animal Care Center during the month of September, and our lives haven’t been the same since – lol. September also marked the first time when chikungunya really started to rear its ugly head. People were dropped likes flies due to this miserable virus transmitted by mosquitoes.
And to end out the year, we had more business news. Island Blues, the popular waterfront spot in Coral Bay, announced that it had closed its doors for good, while Motu, one of our favorite Cruz bay watering holes announced it would serve its last drink at the end of the month. On a positive note, we immediately learned that DR!NK would take the place at Motu and that lots of familiar faces will remain onboard. We also had a great new Italian restaurant, Vista Mare, open in Wharfside Village, and a new market opened over in Coral Bay.
All in all, it was a truly a great year. Here’s to hoping 2015 is even better! Happy New Year everyone!!
