St Kitts & Nevis
A purpose-built superyacht marina on St Kitts' southeast peninsula, Basseterre's Georgian streets a short hop north, and Nevis' plantation inns across a strait guarded at its centre by an island of terns.
St Kitts and Nevis share a single strait and very little else in temperament. St Kitts runs to the practical — Christophe Harbour's purpose-built marina on the southeast peninsula, Basseterre's cruise pier and Georgian streets, a fortress the British once reckoned impregnable. Nevis, across the Narrows, runs to the quiet: a dormant volcano wearing cloud most afternoons, sugar estates turned into a handful of the Caribbean's oldest plantation inns, and a capital where the room upstairs is still the seat of government. Between the two lies Booby Island, a hectare of rock that belongs to nobody but eight species of seabird.
“Nevis lies close enough to see from a Christophe Harbour berth, and far enough in character to feel like an entirely different itinerary.”
Signature anchorages
Two islands, one strait, and a marina built for the fleet rather than adapted for it.
- Christophe Harbour Marina & the Great Salt PondThe purpose-built base on St Kitts' southeast peninsula — 250 alongside berths at full build-out, 50 of them to 76m/250ft with draft to 5.6m; a channel cut in 2013 opened the old Great Salt Pond to the sea. Designated port of entry, customs and immigration on site.
- White House BayJust outside the Great Salt Pond entrance and rated among the best anchorages in the Caribbean — calm, good holding, a sunken tugboat and an 18th-century troop ship for snorkelling, Salt Plage on the beach for the evening.
- Cockleshell & Banana BayThe peninsula's tip, open to swell in places but the settled-weather choice for the view across to Nevis; Park Hyatt St Kitts sits on Banana Bay, Spice Mill on Cockleshell.
- Basseterre roadstead & Port ZanteThe capital's open roadstead (unprotected anchorage) beside the cruise pier; Port Zante's own marina holds 36 wet berths to 150ft/46m. A clearance and provisioning stop more than an overnight.
- Charlestown roadstead & Pinney's Beach, NevisOpen anchorage off the Nevis capital, with a free dinghy dock south of the ferry pier; Four Seasons Resort Nevis holds the sand at Pinney's Beach a little further north.
- The Narrows & Booby IslandThe strait between the two islands closes to about 1.6nm at its narrowest; Booby Island sits roughly midway, an uninhabited islet that's home to eight seabird species and nothing else. Not an anchorage — the crossing itself, best timed for the current.
The scene
A fortress, a sugar railway, a founding father's birthplace, and the strait between the two islands.
Brimstone Hill Fortress
Built from 1690 over the following century by British military engineers and enslaved African labour; by 1780 it was reckoned the 'Gibraltar of the Caribbean'. The Citadel crowns one of two peaks, the earliest surviving example of polygonal fortress design.
The St Kitts Scenic Railway
A 29km narrow-gauge line laid from 1912 to feed the central sugar factory in Basseterre — the system that kept St Kitts producing sugar until 2005, longer than almost anywhere else in the Caribbean. Tourist trains have run the coastal route since 2003.
Nelson's wedding, Montpelier
Horatio Nelson married the Nevis-born Frances Nisbet at Montpelier Estate on 11 March 1787, with the future King William IV standing in to give away the bride. The estate is now one of the island's plantation inns.
Alexander Hamilton's birthplace
A Charlestown townhouse built around 1680, rebuilt after the 1840 earthquake and restored in 1983; the ground floor tells Nevis' history and Hamilton's early years in it, while the upper floor still sits as the Nevis Island Assembly.
The Booby Island Regatta
A first-weekend-in-May sailing festival, run since 2008, that sends everything from keelboats to kiteboards around the islet in the Narrows and back — proceeds support the Nevis Aquatic and Sailing Centre.
Nevis Peak
A dormant stratovolcano rising to 985m, usually capped in cloud by early afternoon; the last eruption was some 100,000 years ago, though the hot springs on its lower slopes are considerably younger — the newest formed in 1953.
Table & stay ashore
Beachfront plates on the St Kitts side, plantation-inn tables and verandas across the Narrows on Nevis.
Salt Plage
Steps from the marina on White House Bay — hammocks over the water, sailcloth daybeds, and a fish taco served in a fried breadfruit shell instead of a tortilla. Tender dock on site.
Spice Mill
Beachfront at the far end of Cockleshell Bay, open cabanas on the sand and views straight across to Nevis; Caribbean cooking built around the day's catch.
Park Hyatt St Kitts
126 rooms on Banana Bay, the Caribbean debut for the Park Hyatt brand when it opened in 2017, inside the Christophe Harbour development a few minutes from the marina.
Golden Rock Inn
A 19th-century sugar estate above Gingerland on Nevis Peak's lower slope, bought in 2006 by the painter Brice Marden and his wife, the artist Helen Marden. The 100-acre gardens, laid out by landscape designer Raymond Jungles, run to more than fifty species of palm.
The Hermitage
A lignum-vitae-framed great house built sometime between 1670 and 1740, long claimed as the oldest surviving wooden building in the Caribbean; eleven further cottages sleep up to 35 guests in total.
Nisbet Plantation Beach Club
Planted as a sugar estate in 1778; the Avenue of the Palms still runs from the 18th-century great house straight down to the sand — the Caribbean's only historic plantation hotel built directly on a beach.
Ottley's Plantation Inn
Founded in the early 1700s by the Yorkshire-born Drewry Ottley, some 500ft up the slopes of Mount Liamuiga; on a clear day the view reaches St Barths and St Martin.
Four Seasons Resort Nevis
189 rooms and suites on Pinney's Beach outside Charlestown, recently refreshed with three new dining rooms, among them the Crowned Monkey rum bar.
A week, sketched
Christophe Harbour
Clear in at the marina — a designated port of entry with customs and immigration on site — and settle into White House Bay for the first night; sundowners at Salt Plage, a short tender from the berth.
Basseterre
Round the coast to the capital; Port Zante for provisioning, then ashore to The Circus and the Berkeley Memorial clock, and the Georgian terraces of Independence Square.
Brimstone Hill & the Scenic Railway
Up to Brimstone Hill Fortress for the view from the Citadel, then the coastal run on the St Kitts Scenic Railway's narrow-gauge line, laid a century ago for sugar cane.
Cockleshell & Banana Bay
Back down the peninsula for a beach day — lunch at Spice Mill on Cockleshell Bay, the afternoon at anchor off Banana Bay below Park Hyatt St Kitts.
Across the Narrows to Charlestown
The crossing to Nevis, Booby Island passing to one side; anchor off Charlestown and tender to the Museum of Nevis History for Alexander Hamilton's birthplace and the room upstairs where the island's parliament still sits.
Nevis' plantation inns
Inland and up Nevis Peak's lower slopes for Golden Rock Inn's gardens, then on to Montpelier Estate, where Nelson married Fanny Nisbet in 1787, and dinner at the Hermitage or Nisbet Plantation Beach Club.
Pinney's Beach & return
A last morning off Pinney's Beach by the Four Seasons, then back across the Narrows to Christophe Harbour to disembark.
Pair with
The gallery
The year, measured
Monthly means at the heart of this water — daily maxima averaged, wind as mean daily peak.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air, day °C | 27 | 27 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 29 | 29 | 30 | 30 | 29 | 28 | 28 |
| Sea °C | 27 | 26 | 27 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 29 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 29 | 28 |
| Wind, peak kt | 12 | 13 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 12 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 12 |
ERA5 reanalysis via Open-Meteo · 2019–2023 means · sea temperature 2022–2023
The yachts that run these waters
Profiles from the record — introductions via the harbour desk.
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