Because of the compressed timeframe for us to get to St. Martin, we decided to anchor on the east-most part of the BVIs so that we could wake up and leave in the dark at 3am.

Traveling at night close to shore can be a problem. While we have GPS and a live chart (chart plotter), even if it is inaccurate by relatively small amounts, it would be easy to not see a rock or coral head and ground the boat.

So, we picked a spot on the east coast of the BVIs that was pretty clear and open water to the east, so that when we got up at 3am and couldn’t see much, we could (hopefully) take some straight shot out from the shore to open water.

Hallover’s Bay on the southwest shore of Cooper Island fit our bill. Getting there from Soper’s hole, we had to navigate through a couple of narrow passes, but we were doing that during the day. At 3am all we had to do was haul anchor, and head south and then east and we were in the open ocean.

Also, the bay was empty (the BVIs were still mostly “closed” to all pleasure boats, so we probably won’t see it empty again) and beautiful.