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The 2026 BVI cruising permit for a foreign-flagged yacht with 12 paying guests in peak season (December 1 to April 30) is $16 per person per day plus a $200 entry fee. A 7-day charter clears at roughly $1,544 in permit costs alone, before customs, marine park fees, mooring ball charges at the Bight at Norman Island or Salt Pond Bay, and the National Parks Trust day-use fees. The USVI charter license picture is messier. The crossing between the two takes 30 minutes by yacht. The paperwork takes between one and three hours each way.
This is the brief on which to choose, what the customs and permit regimes actually cost, and where the BVI and USVI itineraries earn or lose against each other. The summary at the top: most 7-day Caribbean charters between mid-December and mid-April should base in the BVI, accept the permit cost, and use the USVI only for a half-day at the Cruz Bay sandbar if at all. The Charlotte Amalie pickup makes sense for a narrow subset of clients with a San Juan connection.
The BVI cruising permit, as it actually applies
The BVI charges cruising permits on a per-person-per-day basis, with the rate split between commercial (chartered) and pleasure (privately used) yachts, and between peak and off-peak seasons. The 2026 rates published by the BVI Customs Department are:
Peak season (December 1 to April 30): foreign-flagged commercial yacht with 12 paying guests, $16 per person per day. Plus $200 vessel entry fee.
Off-peak season (May 1 to November 30): $8 per person per day. Same vessel entry fee.
A 7-day charter for 12 guests in peak season therefore comes to: 12 guests times $16 times 7 days, plus $200 entry. That is $1,544. Most operators bury this in the APA. A few list it as a separate line item in the MYBA contract. The number does not change with the yacht size. A 100m yacht with 12 guests pays the same as a 24m yacht with 12 guests.
The permit is purchased on entry at one of the BVI customs ports of entry: West End on Tortola (Soper's Hole), Road Harbour on Tortola (the main port for larger yachts), Jost Van Dyke (Great Harbour), or Virgin Gorda (Spanish Town or Gun Creek). The captain or the agent presents the crew list, the guest list, the yacht's documentation, and the previous port clearance. Clearance takes one hour if the agent is pre-filed and the documents are in order. It takes three hours if anything is missing.
The yacht must also pay the National Parks Trust day-use fee for moorings in protected areas (the Indians, the Caves at Norman Island, the Baths on Virgin Gorda, Diamond Cay, the Dogs). The 2026 fee is $30 per yacht per day for yachts under 25m, $50 for 25m to 40m, and $100 for over 40m. Mooring balls are first-come, first-served and the broker should pre-position the yacht for the high-demand stops (the Bight, the Baths, Manchioneel Bay on Cooper).
The USVI charter license, as it complicates
The USVI does not run a cruising permit on the BVI model. It runs a charter license regime that targets the yacht itself, not the guests. A foreign-flagged yacht (Cayman, Marshall Islands, BVI) chartering inside the USVI must hold a USVI charter license, which is administered by the Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs in cooperation with the US Coast Guard. The license is annual, not per-charter, and costs $300. The yacht must also hold a US Customs and Border Protection cruising license if foreign-flagged.
The catch is the Jones Act and the Passenger Vessel Services Act. A foreign-flagged yacht cannot transport paying passengers between two US ports. A USVI charter that starts in Charlotte Amalie (St Thomas) and ends in Charlotte Amalie is legal because it is a circular trip. A USVI charter that starts in St Thomas and ends in Cruz Bay (St John) is technically illegal under the PVSA because both are US ports, and the yacht is foreign-flagged. The Jones Act enforcement is patchy. The fine when enforced is $762 per passenger.
The result: most foreign-flagged charter yachts the USVI run circular routes from St Thomas, with St John day-stops returning to a St Thomas overnight to avoid the PVSA exposure. The route quality suffers. A US-flagged yacht does not have the PVSA issue, and the small number of US-flagged charter yachts in the 24m to 50m range can run a true St Thomas to St John itinerary.
The BVI itinerary the brokers sell
The standard 7-day BVI week from a Tortola base is well-worn and well-priced. The captain runs it 25 times a season. The route:
Day 1, Saturday: Embark Road Harbour or Nanny Cay, Tortola. Lunch on the move to the Bight at Norman Island. Overnight on a mooring ball at the Bight. Pirate's Bight or Willy T tender for drinks.
Day 2, Sunday: Norman Island to Cooper Island via the Indians for a snorkel stop. Lunch at Cooper Island Beach Club. Overnight at Cooper on a mooring.
Day 3, Monday: Cooper to Virgin Gorda. Stop at the Baths in the morning before the day-trip crowd from Tortola arrives. Lunch on the hook off Spanish Town. Afternoon at the Bitter End or Saba Rock in the North Sound. Overnight in the North Sound.
Day 4, Tuesday: North Sound day. Bitter End, Saba Rock, beach time at Prickly Pear. Overnight North Sound.
Day 5, Wednesday: Virgin Gorda to Anegada via the Dogs for snorkel. Lunch at Cow Wreck Beach Bar or Anegada Reef Hotel. Overnight on the Anegada mooring field or, better, the new south-side anchorage in 4m to 6m of sand.
Day 6, Thursday: Anegada to Jost Van Dyke. Long lunch at Foxy's Taboo or Sandy Spit. Afternoon at White Bay (the Soggy Dollar). Overnight Great Harbour Jost or back to Cane Garden Bay on Tortola.
Day 7, Friday: Jost to Sandy Cay or Green Cay for the last morning. Tender to Soper's Hole for lunch ashore at Pusser's Landing. Run back to Road Harbour or Nanny Cay for the final dinner aboard.
Day 8, Saturday: Disembark.
The mileage is approximately 90 nautical miles across the week, which is the lowest fuel pass-through of any standard Caribbean week. The trade is that every other yacht in the BVI is running a version of this. The Baths at 10am is a queue. The Bight at sunset in February is 60 boats.
The brokers' BVI itinerary, fixed
The version we run on yachts in the 35m to 60m range, where the schedule is more flexible and the operator has the discretion to skip the saturated stops:
Day 1: Embark Nanny Cay (not Road Harbour, which is the cruise-ship and ferry traffic). Run southeast to Peter Island's Deadman Bay for the night. Overnight Deadman.
Day 2: Peter Island to Salt Island (the wreck of the Rhone) for the morning dive, then Cooper or Manchioneel for the afternoon. Overnight Cooper.
Day 3: Cooper to the Baths at 7:30am for an empty Baths morning, then up the south coast of Virgin Gorda to the North Sound for the afternoon at Prickly Pear. Overnight North Sound.
Day 4: Anegada day-trip from North Sound. A 17 nautical mile reach northeast, lunch on the south coast, run back to North Sound for the evening. This works on a settled forecast only.
Day 5: North Sound to Cane Garden Bay or Diamond Cay via the Dogs. Overnight Diamond or Sandy Spit.
Day 6: Jost Van Dyke day, anchoring off Sandy Cay and Sandy Spit for the morning, lunch at One Love or B-Line at Little Harbour. Overnight Little Harbour or Great Harbour.
Day 7: Jost to Tortola south coast for the final day. Smuggler's Cove or Long Bay anchorage on the west end of Tortola. Final dinner aboard.
Day 8: Disembark Nanny Cay.
The variant trades the Bight at Norman Island for Deadman's, the Cooper crowd at sunset for the Salt Island wreck, and the standard ending at Soper's Hole for a quieter west-Tortola finish. Same mileage. Different week.
Why the USVI is mostly a non-base
A St Thomas pickup makes sense in a narrow set of cases. First, when the charter client is flying via San Juan. The American Airlines and JetBlue mainlines into St Thomas (Cyril E. King) are denser than the BVI ferry chain via Tortola. Second, when the route includes a longer Caribbean leg (St Croix, Culebra, the eastern Puerto Rico cays) where a USVI base saves the BVI clearance time. Third, when the yacht is US-flagged and would pay the BVI permit on top of the USVI license.
In every other case, the USVI base costs the charter client between half a day and a full day in the BVI cruising program. The 30-minute hop from Charlotte Amalie to West End on Tortola is short, but the clearance, the National Parks Trust registration, and the mooring ball negotiation push the first BVI afternoon late.
The US Virgin Islands themselves: St John's Trunk Bay and Cinnamon Bay are good for a half-day. The Hassel Island anchorage off Charlotte Amalie is workable for a sunset stop. St Croix is 40 nautical miles south of St Thomas and is a long day-trip, better as a one-way drop on a 10-day route. None of this is week-quality on its own.
Passed on
We pass on the BVI-and-USVI combination week sold as the "Virgin Islands big tour." The double-clearance overhead consumes a day of the week, the PVSA exposure on a foreign-flagged yacht running St Thomas to St John is real, and the route gains nothing the BVI does not already deliver.
We pass on a St Thomas pickup for any client not already routing through San Juan. The Tortola pickup via the Beef Island ferry from St Thomas takes 30 minutes plus customs, and most operators include the inbound logistics in the APA. The Beef Island airport (Terrance B. Lettsome, EIS) takes private charter aircraft and small commercial. The flight times work.
We pass on Saturday-noon embarkation at Road Harbour on Tortola in peak season. The cruise-ship arrivals at Road Town between 09:00 and 13:00 turn the harbor into queue and the customs office into a bottleneck. Nanny Cay is the better embarkation point. Soper's Hole at West End is the better one if the route starts west.
We pass on the Soggy Dollar Bar mid-afternoon stop in February. White Bay at 14:00 from January to mid-April is a full anchorage of charter boats and day-tripping power cats. The bar is a queue. The water is warm. Go at 10am or 17:00 and the math improves.
We pass on the suggestion that a USVI charter is "cheaper because no permit." The USVI charter license is annualized, the operator pays it once and amortizes it across the season, and the saving on a guest day is roughly $4. The trade for the PVSA exposure and the route compromise is not worth $28 per guest per week.
How to ask the broker
Three questions for a BVI or USVI charter brief.
First, "is the permit included in the base rate or carried in the APA?" Most BVI charters carry it in the APA. The line should appear in the contract addendum or in the APA breakdown.
Second, "where is the yacht actually based between charters?" A yacht based at Nanny Cay or Frenchman's Cay in Tortola does not pay a positioning leg. A yacht based at Yacht Haven Grande in Charlotte Amalie crossing for a BVI week pays one. The positioning leg is captain time and APA fuel.
Third, "does the yacht hold the right paperwork for the route?" A foreign-flagged yacht that has not done a BVI clearance in two seasons may have lapsed the customs agent registration. A US-flagged yacht offered for a BVI charter must hold a BVI Trade License under the most recent rules. The broker should confirm both.
FAQ
What does the BVI cruising permit cost in 2026? For a foreign-flagged yacht with 12 paying guests in the peak season (December 1 to April 30), the BVI cruising permit runs $16 per person per day plus a $200 vessel fee on entry. A week comes to roughly $1,544 plus minor handling. Shoulder and low season rates fall by half.
Can a USVI-based charter yacht enter the BVI? Only with a temporary cruising permit, customs clearance at West End or Soper's Hole on Tortola, and a yacht that holds either US documentation or a foreign flag that has cleared. The crossing is 30 minutes from St Thomas. The paperwork is one hour if the captain has the agent pre-filed and three hours if not.
Which base is the right one for a charter client? Tortola if the route is BVI-only. St Thomas if the route includes the USVI Hassel Island and St John day, or if the charter client is flying via San Juan and prefers a direct hop. Mixing flags and bases adds a half-day to the itinerary on every crossing.
What yacht size works for the BVI? 30m to 65m is the sweet range. Below 30m the long-tank reach to Anegada is tight. Above 65m the Baths anchorage, the Bight mooring field, and the Cooper Island swing room all become limiting. The North Sound holds yachts to 75m without difficulty.
Is the Caribbean charter season the same in BVI and USVI? Yes. Both run December through April. The peak weeks are Christmas, New Year, Presidents' Week (February), and Easter. The shoulder weeks (late November, late April) carry the same logistics but lower rates.
For the broader Caribbean week structures, the Caribbean charter pillar covers the inventory. The BVI pillar covers the specific yachts and the dockage. For the cost framework, the Caribbean charter cost guide. For sibling Caribbean route notes, the Grenadines week, the Exumas Nassau-to-Staniel route, the Antigua to St Barths week, the April shoulder window, and the Turks and Caicos charter brief. For the Tortola overnight before or after the charter, the Tortola hotel list; for the St Thomas dinner ashore, the St Thomas restaurant guide.