USVI Anchoring Guide: National Park Moorings, Customs & Where You Can Still Anchor

Three Islands, Three Regimes

Most crews meet the USVI as a footnote to a BVI charter — a day in Christmas Cove, a night at Cruz Bay to clear in, the flight home from St. Thomas. That is a pity, because the three main islands are as different from each other as they are from Tortola, and the difference is legal before it is scenic. The trade wind is the same everywhere — east-north-east at 15–25 knots through the winter, firmer in the “Christmas winds” of December and January — and so is the sea bed, mostly clean sand with coral heads at the edges. What changes is who owns the bottom.

Across all three, one territorial rule applies outside park waters: the USVI limits a vessel to 14 cumulative days in any one location within six months, after which you move to another bay and the clock restarts. Nobody on a charter will hit it; a liveaboard wintering in Coral Bay will. Every bay in this guide (and the rest of the thirty we have verified) is on our US Virgin Islands anchorages hub with coordinates, depth, holding and a recommended alarm radius.

First Things First: Clearing In (Yes, Even From the BVI)

The mistake we see most often is a BVI charter crew sailing across the Narrows to St. John for lunch and treating it like crossing a county line. It is an international border. Arriving in the USVI from the BVI — or from any foreign port — you must report to US Customs and Border Protection before you do anything else, and that means before you pick up a ball at Francis Bay.

• The CBP ROAM app. Free, needs a login.gov account, and lets you file your arrival from the boat. CBP may clear you in the app — often by video call — or direct you to present in person. Set it up before you leave the BVI; the signal off Sopers Hole is better than the signal you will find while trying to hold station off Cruz Bay.
• In person. Cruz Bay on St. John (the office by the ferry dock), Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas (Crown Bay), and Christiansted on St. Croix. Cruz Bay is the natural choice from the BVI, and the park allows a short daytime anchorage there for vessels up to 60 ft to do exactly this — but the ferry channel is sacred and the inner harbour is moorings.
• Crew documents. US citizens need a passport or equivalent; everyone else needs whatever their nationality needs to enter the United States, and a BVI charter contract is not it. The captain files for the boat, but every person aboard is being admitted.
• Puerto Rico counts too. The USVI sits outside the US customs territory, so CBP requires an arrival report in both directions between Puerto Rico and the USVI, even on a US-flagged boat with an all-American crew.

Going the other way, the BVI wants you cleared in at Sopers Hole, Road Town, Spanish Town, Gun Creek or Great Harbour before you stop anywhere — our BVI anchoring guide covers that side of the Narrows.

St. John: How the National Park Mooring System Works

Virgin Islands National Park was created in 1956 and today covers about 60% of St. John's land and most of its north- and south-shore bays. The reef and seagrass that make those bays worth visiting are what the park exists to protect, so the Park Service and the Friends of the Park have laid roughly two hundred moorings through park waters, and the rules are built around using them.

Read the stripes

• White ball, blue stripe — the standard overnight mooring, for vessels up to 60 ft LOA.
• Larger white ball, blue stripe — “big boat” moorings for 61–100 ft, at Francis Bay, Lind Point, Leinster Bay and Great Lameshur.
• Orange ball, blue stripe — day-use only, for snorkelling and diving. You move off before 5 p.m.
• Blue ball, white or red stripe — permitted commercial boats and the Caneel Bay resort. Not yours.

The fee, and the clock

Any vessel anchoring or mooring in park waters between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. owes $26 for the night ($13 with a Senior or Access pass), paid before the night through the Recreation.gov app — scan the QR code on the pay station — or at the self-registration stations at Cruz Bay finger pier, Caneel Bay, Francis Bay, Leinster Bay, Salt Pond Bay and Great Lameshur. Rangers check. The park also counts: no more than seven consecutive nights in one bay, and no more than 30 nights in park waters in a calendar year. Keep your own tally — a logbook that records where you slept is the only way to argue with a ranger who has counted differently.

Where you can still anchor

This is the part the BVI does not prepare you for. The park's visitor-use page is blunt: anchoring is permitted in two designated anchorages — offshore Francis Bay and Lind Point (the stretch between Cruz Bay and Caneel Bay) — and all anchors must be dropped only in sand, with no part of the anchor or chain touching coral. Vessels over 210 ft may not anchor in the park at all, and no vessel may lie to both an anchor and a mooring. Outside those two zones, in park waters, the assumption is a ball. Several bays go further: Reef Bay on the south shore is closed to anchoring outright, with a couple of day-use balls off Genti Bay, and the whole of Hurricane Hole — the mangrove arms off Coral Bay that every cruising guide once called the best storm refuge in the Caribbean — has been Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument since 2001. Anchoring there is prohibited except in a declared hurricane, and the storm berths are assigned by application each spring (the 2026 deadline was 15 May; the park waived the permit fee). If you are reading this in November, Hurricane Hole is a place to dinghy into, not to anchor in.

The Best of St. John

Francis Bay is the one to plan around: the biggest mooring field on the north shore, one of the two designated anchorages just outside it, 3–7 m over clean sand, and a beach that empties when the day boats leave. It shares a bay with Maho, where turtles graze the seagrass a boat-length from the balls — which is exactly why the seagrass is off-limits to anchors. Both are open to the north, and from November to March a north swell generated by a gale off Cape Hatteras arrives without a breath of local wind to explain it; on those nights the south-shore bays are the answer. Caneel Bay and Hawksnest are the closest balls to Cruz Bay — convenient for the customs run and the Friday-night restaurants — and the outer part of Caneel lies in the Lind Point anchorage. Cruz Bay itself is a ferry terminal with a town attached: the inner harbour is private moorings, the outer anchorage east of the terminal is 4–10 m sand and mud, and you will be woken by the 6 a.m. Red Hook boat whatever you do. On the south coast, Salt Pond Bay under Ram Head is the quiet one, with the trail to the salt pond and the surest shelter from that north swell; Great Lameshur has big-boat balls and a research station and almost nobody else. And Coral Bay, outside the park at the island's east end, is the liveaboard village — free anchoring in 4–12 m of sand and mud, protection from everything but the south-east, and Skinny Legs at the head of the bay. Start with Francis Bay, Cruz Bay and Coral Bay in the St. John & National Park anchorages.

St. Thomas: Free Anchoring, Heavy Traffic

Cross Pillsbury Sound and the rules fall away. St. Thomas has no park moorings, no nightly fee and no ranger; it has instead the busiest cruise-ship port in the Caribbean, a ferry every half hour, and the charter fleets of Red Hook. The anchoring is free and the etiquette is about channels. Charlotte Amalie is the big harbour — deep (5–15 m), well protected from everything but the south, and lined with ships that displace more water than your marina. Anchor in the Frenchtown corner clear of the berths, keep to five knots, and clear in at Crown Bay if you came from abroad. Round the east end, Christmas Cove on Great St. James is the island's best-loved day anchorage and a fine night in settled trades: 4–10 m of sand, snorkellers in the water all day, and an easy hop to Red Hook for provisions. Honeymoon Bay on Water Island, a mile from Charlotte Amalie by dinghy but a world away by mood, is the answer when the harbour is too loud — 3–7 m of sand, a beach bar, and shelter from the trades. Red Hook is the ferry-and-charter base at the east end (anchor clear of the marked ferry approach, watch the wash), and Cowpet Bay next door lies under the St. Thomas Yacht Club, whose racing marks are not moorings. The north-coast bays — Brewers Bay by the airport, for one — are trade-wind lee shores in the wrong wind; treat them as lunch stops in winter. See Christmas Cove, Honeymoon Bay and Charlotte Amalie in the St. Thomas & Water Island anchorages.

St. Croix: The Island the Charter Boats Skip

St. Croix is 35 nm south of St. John across the open Caribbean, which is why the bareboat fleets do not go there and why you should. The passage is a beam reach in the trades on the way down and a hard beat back, so most crews give it three nights and a weather window for the return. Christiansted is the arrival: a reef-fringed harbour entered through a well-marked channel, 3–9 m of sand and mud, a Danish colonial waterfront, the CBP office and — anchored east of Protestant Cay — the calmest night in the USVI. Buck Island Reef National Monument, five miles east, is the reason to come: a barrier reef with the only underwater snorkel trail in the US park system. It is also the strictest water in this guide. The monument opens 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., there is no overnight stay of any kind, anchoring is confined to the West Beach anchoring area on an annual anchoring permit (free; vessels over 90 ft are not eligible), the lagoon is moorings only, and nothing is anchored inside it. Visit, then sail back to Christiansted or to Green Cay to sleep. Along the north coast, Salt River Bay — a National Historical Park where Columbus's crew came ashore in 1493 — takes anchors on sand and mud outside its mangrove channels, and Cane Bay offers a wall dive that starts a hundred metres from your keel. Frederiksted on the west coast is an open roadstead with the island's only deep-water pier: a pleasant, easy night in settled trades and no place at all in a westerly. See Christiansted, Buck Island and Salt River Bay in the St. Croix anchorages.

Anchoring Rules & Etiquette in the USVI

The short list, in the order you will meet it:

• Clear in before you stop. From the BVI, Puerto Rico or anywhere foreign: CBP ROAM or an office, and the office before the beach bar.
• In park waters, a ball is the default. Anchor only in the two designated anchorages, only in sand, never on a mooring and an anchor together. Pay the $26 before 5 p.m. and count your nights: seven per bay, thirty per year.
• Two monuments, no anchoring. Hurricane Hole (St. John) and Buck Island (St. Croix). One is a storm refuge by permit, the other closes at five.
• Sand only, everywhere. Outside the park it is courtesy rather than law, but the coral heads that surround every USVI bay will bend a fluke and cost you a reef. Look before you drop.
• Give the ferries their water. Cruz Bay, Red Hook and Charlotte Amalie all run scheduled ferries through marked channels at speed. Anchor well clear, and expect wash at dawn.
• Fourteen days in six months. The territorial rule for staying in one place outside park waters. Move bays and it resets.
• Anchor light, dusk to dawn. Whether on a ball or your own hook — see overnight anchoring rules.

Why an Anchor Alarm Matters Here

The reflex on a mooring is to switch the alarm off — the ball is the park's problem, not yours. It is the wrong reflex, for a reason that has nothing to do with the park. At anchor you have chain you can see, a snubber you rigged, and a sense of how the boat sits when it is holding. On a ball you have a pennant somebody else spliced, a block you cannot inspect, and a boat that is supposed to sit still — so the only signal you will ever get that something has let go is a small, steady change in position. That is what a GPS anchor alarm measures. Our St. John mooring-bay pages list 60–65 m radii, which allows for the ball's own ground tackle and for GPS scatter; with a tight fix, bring it in toward 40 m. In the two designated anchorages and outside the park, set it the usual way — scope plus boat length plus margin, with the scope calculator — and remember the two things that move boats here that the forecast will not mention: the winter north swell that rolls into every north-shore bay from Trunk to Francis, and ferry wash at first light. GPS accuracy for anchor alarms explains how to set a radius that ignores the wash and still catches the drag.

The Bottom Line

The USVI is not one cruising ground but three. St. John is a national park with a fee, a clock and two places to anchor; treat the moorings as the point rather than the obstacle, and it is the calmest week you will spend in the Virgin Islands. St. Thomas gives the anchor back and asks only that you stay out of the ferry's way. St. Croix, a day's sail south, gives you Christiansted and Buck Island and a fraction of the boats. Clear in first, drop only in sand, count your park nights, and run a GPS anchor alarm on the ball as faithfully as on the hook — because the reef that the park protects is also the reef a parted pennant will put you on.