Destruction Of Charted Sailboats A Huge Long-Term Blow To Tourism
Many buildings are flattened if they even remain at all, there’s little to no power and fresh water and basic supplies of survival are desperately needed by the residents.
There’s no ferry service between the islands and thousands of the chartered boats – the lifeblood of many in the Virgin Islands – are wrecked.
About all that remains of Foxy’s and the Soggy Dollar Bar – two of the most famous and popular bars in the BVIs – are their tin roofs.
The once-gorgeous Bitter End Yacht Club in the BVIs is destroyed. Several other hotels and resorts are damaged, gone or closed until further notice. Tortola and its man city of Road Town, the starting point for many Virgin Islands adventures, are devastated.
The BVI’s Interline Regatta, a fun-filled island-to-island boat-hopping party scheduled for Oct, 10-29, is almost certainly canceled.
With all this damage, it will be months before any tourists are able to to the islands and at least a couple of years before any normalcy returns to them.
Even when power and basic services are restored, bars and restaurants are repaired and serving food and drinks, there’s still a huge issue unique to the BVIs that will affect tourism.
And that is the chartered sailboat boats.
Without sailboats, people cannot move around the islands. And that’s the big attraction for a huge number of tourists going to the Virgin Islands. With no available boats to charter, there will be no tourists to many places in the islands, in particular the BVIs.
This is one of the major issues facing residents and businesses once they shake off the initial effects of Irma. A long road of recovery is ahead for everyone on the Virgin Islands.
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I’m so sad. I’ve chartered in the US and BVIs a total,of 8 weeks and have recently signed a contract to charter a cat out of St Thomas in June. I gather the airport might be open for business right before I’m due to get there. But will the re-provisioning places in Cane Garden Bay and Virgin Gordon be open for a week’s cruise? They are critical, assuming the boat I want wasn’t badly damaged.
Very Sad, I just chartered one as well For MARCH, the boat is fine, but not sure we can even get there by then. The charter company won’t give back the deposit at this point so not sure what will happen. But if we can not get there I am hoping they will understand.
Good luck!