Road Town History and Culture: Drake's Channel Navigation, Beef Island Airport, White Bay Soggy Dollar Bar, Hurricane Irma Impact and Recovery, BVI Night Sailing Anchorage Culture, and the Road Town Saturday Market
The Road Town history and culture circuit covers the Drake Channel sailing history, the Beef Island airport gateway, the Jost Van Dyke White Bay beach bar pilgrimage to the Soggy Dollar original Painkiller, the Hurricane Irma 2017 devastation and recovery, the BVI anchorage social culture of the bareboat charter holiday, and the Saturday morning Road Town farmers market.
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Drake's Passage: The Historical Navigation
The Sir Francis Drake Channel between the Tortola south coast and the southern BVI island chain was named for the English privateer who navigated the passage in 1585 on his Caribbean raids, and remains the primary sailing channel of the BVI for the consistent trade wind that has made the passage the training ground for Caribbean sailing for more than a century. The channel view from the Road Town heights, with the island chain stretching south to the horizon, is the most comprehensive geographic perspective on the BVI sailing grounds.
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Beef Island Bridge: The Tortola East End
Beef Island, connected to Tortola by the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, hosts the Terrence B. Lettsome International Airport that is the primary air gateway to the BVI, with direct flights from San Juan and the Caribbean islands and the twin-engine aircraft that serve the regional routes. The east end of Tortola, with the Long Bay beach and the Josiah's Bay surf break, provides the Atlantic-facing landscape contrast to the protected south coast of Road Town.
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Jost Van Dyke White Bay: The Beach Bar Culture
White Bay on the south coast of Jost Van Dyke, the most celebrated beach bar destination in the Caribbean sailing world, is lined with the beach bars including the Soggy Dollar Bar, the home of the original Painkiller cocktail, the Ivan's Stress Free Bar, and the Corsairs Beach Bar, that together create the most concentrated beach bar experience available at a single anchorage in the eastern Caribbean. The Soggy Dollar is named for the wet money that arriving swimmers bring from their anchored boats.
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BVI Hurricane History: The Irma Impact
Hurricane Irma struck the British Virgin Islands on September 6, 2017 with 295-kilometer-per-hour winds that made it the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, destroying approximately 90 percent of the BVI infrastructure including the Road Town ferry terminal, the Bitter End Yacht Club, the Willy T floating bar, and thousands of charter and private yachts. The BVI recovery, largely funded by the UK government, took 3 to 5 years and the charter fleet was fully restored by 2020, but the hurricane demonstrated the existential vulnerability of small island territories to the intensifying Caribbean hurricane season.
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Night Sailing and Anchorage Culture
The BVI night sailing culture, in which the bareboat charter crews navigate the channel by the lights of the island chain to the overnight anchorage and then gather for the sundowner rum at the cockpit before the beach bar dinner, is the most complete sailing holiday social ritual in the Caribbean. The anchorage culture of the BVI, where the boats gather in the protected bays and the crews visit each other by dinghy in the evening tradition, creates the floating village community that is the unique social structure of the Caribbean sailing holiday.
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Tortola Road Town Market: The Saturday Morning
The Saturday morning Road Town market, where the local farmers from the Tortola interior bring the tropical produce, the flowers, the herbs, and the prepared foods to the town center market stalls, is the most authentic domestic commerce of the BVI and the best opportunity to observe the daily life of the Tortola community beyond the charter boat and tourism economy. The market operates in the covered structure adjacent to the Road Town waterfront from early morning until midday.