minervajeanne

My fiancee and I are planning our mid-August honeymoon and have come up with the following idea so far. We are thinking about chartering a private yacht out of the BVIs (due to shorter flights from San Francisco), and sailing over 8 days to St Lucia. Then we were considering a 7 night honeymoon package at Anse Chastenet to finish off our trip. We're not particularly inclined to sit around on the beach for the whole trip, and all the included activites sound great. Is this a good trip idea given the hurricane season? We've never been to the Caribbean, so we aren't sure what to expect weather-wise in August (Is it uncomfortably hot, for example?). Is it difficult/more costly to arrange these sorts of activites independently and stay at another resort?

Maybe we'll go to Lake Louise instead, for an entirely different honeymoon....

Thanks!

Sunnyboy

As with many first time visitors to the Caribbean, I think you may have underestimated the distance between the BVI's and St. Lucia. Sailing the Caribbean in mid-August is "iffy" given that you are planning to travel within 2 weeks of peak hurricane season (last year there were several major hurricanes in August although peak time is usually September 1 through Oct. 15). Also, unless you are experienced ocean sailors it is quite ambitious to sail from the BVI's all the way to St. Lucia as the distance is quite far (probably around 500+ miles as the crow flies and much more than that when you take into consideration that a sailboat has to tack back and forth) and you have to cross several large areas of open "blue water" (such as the Anegada Passage and other straits) that can be quite rough even in the best of times. You'll be spending several days and nights completely out at sea and out of sight of any land. I've not made that particular trip myself but in my experience I'd venture to say that if you departed the BVI's on day one you'd be under sail almost non-stop in order to get to St. Lucia in a week.

Your better option would be to spend your first week sailing around either the BVI's or the Grenadines as the islands in either of those groups are closer together and are perfect for sailing and you'll never be more than a couple of hours from safe harbor in the event you encounter "heavy weather". You can then stay at any nearby resort for your second week or fly to St. Lucia and stay at Anse Chastenet.

You may want to rethink your plans.

Callaloo

Congrats on your upcoming wedding!

I second Sunnyboy's observations. They don't call it the "Oh-my-God-a" [Anegada] Passage for nothing. It's a long, upwind slog under the best of circumstances, and once you survive that, you've only gotten from Virgin Gorda to St. Maarten. And that assumes you have a suitable weather window to make the crossing; you could spend days waiting for the optimal conditions to cross. If cost is a matter, be aware that a one-way charter is a lot more costly than a round-trip.

A yacht charter is a great way to spend a honeymoon, and -- assuming you've never done this before -- the BVI are a great place to get a taste of chartering. Just know what you're in for; unless you opt for a super-luxurious (read: ultra-expensive) crewed charter, it's basically camping on the water, albeit more upscale and in some of the most gorgeous spots on the planet. Do yourself a favor and spend your 7 days exploring the BVI by boat, and then flying over to St. Lucia, rather than spending all of those 7 days waiting for your weather window and making the crossing.

Mid-August in the Caribbean should at least inspire you to buy trip interruption insurance. While the odds of rough weather affecting you are small, you'd hate to not have the insurance should you be unfortunate enough to be hit by a storm. (My luck ran out in September, 1998 -- Hurricane Georges -- even though I honeymooned happily in August in St. Maarten some years before that).

Barring a tropical storm/hurricane, the weather doesn't change all that much throughout the year as you get closer to the equator. In August, the trade winds lay down a little (and gain a slightly more southerly component); there is a little more rain, which tends to pass quickly; and it's slightly warmer. I'd much rather be Down Island in August than in Chesapeake country!! But it's a matter of preference and acclimation, and your tolerance for warmth and humidity may not be the same, coming from San Francisco, as for someone coming from the mid-Atlantic. If that's a concern, choose a boat and hotel that has air-conditioning.

Good luck deciding, and if you'd like more information about chartering, the folks at www.traveltalkonline.com -- esp. the BVI Board -- have done it all!

Dreps

Since you're on the West Coast, why don't you consider French Polynesia instead? August is usually very good weather there; the Caribbean will be hot. Consider, for example, a cruise on Radisson's Paul Gauguin, or an overwater bungalow on one of the islands or a couple of the islands.

minervajeanne

Thanks, for everyone's input. We actually were thinking of the expensive crewed charter, so we wouldn't have to sail it ourselves, but it still sounds like I had a not so great idea given our time constraints. I had originally had the idea because the boat we were thinking of chartering is based in the BVIs and heads south to Grenada mid-August. I thought it would be clever to save them some time and get our honeymoon at the same time. That said, reading all these responses, I think we're headed to Fr.Polynesia instead. I hear they have yacht charters there, too.