Private Boat Charters

A private charter means the whole boat is yours: your group, your date, your route within the captain's judgment, and nobody else's schedule aboard. On St. Croix that product runs from a six-guest sportfisher trolling Lang Bank to a 49-passenger sailing catamaran hosting a wedding, with most of the fleet clustered between. This page is the reference for the fully private option: what it buys, what it costs where operators publish numbers, every verified boat that sells it, and how the classic charter days are built.

What chartering privately buys

Three things, and each matters more than the price difference suggests.

Route control. A scheduled tour runs a fixed circuit at fixed times. A charter starts with a conversation: the captain lays out what the day's wind and sea allow, and you choose the emphasis. More snorkeling and less beach, a second reef stop because the first one was good, an early return because the toddler faded, an extra hour trolling because a fish is up, all of it becomes possible when there are no other paying parties aboard to outvote you. Captains keep the final word on where the boat can safely go, and good ones use it, but inside that boundary the itinerary is yours.

Your own pace. Scheduled trips move on a clock because 25 strangers share it. On a chartered boat the snorkel stop lasts as long as your slowest, happiest swimmer wants it to. Groups with small children, guests with mobility issues, serious underwater photographers, and parties that simply want to swim, eat and float without an announcement schedule all get more from the same water this way. It is the difference between attending a tour and spending a day on a boat.

Privacy itself. Proposals, milestone birthdays, family reunions, scattered-ashes ceremonies, or a group that wants its own music and its own conversation: some days should have no audience. Every operator below is practiced at all of these, and several publish it as their core product.

What a charter does not buy is exemption from the rules of the water. Buck Island Reef National Monument remains a federal reserve with its own regulations regardless of who hired the boat, weather calls still belong to the captain, and passenger limits are set by the Coast Guard, a point covered in its own section below.

The whole-boat arithmetic

Private sounds expensive until a group counts heads. Scheduled per-seat water trips on St. Croix ran roughly $75 to $135 per adult at last check depending on length, before gratuity. Set real published whole-boat numbers beside that:

• Nep2une's private morning snorkel charter from the Frederiksted pier was published at $500 for up to six guests at last check, which is about $83 a head with the boat full, below the going per-seat rate for a monument trip, on a boat carrying only your party.
• The trimaran Dragonfly sails only as a private boat, published at $1,200 for up to eight, and its big sister Teroro II charters at $1,800 for up to 20, which works out to $150 and $90 per person respectively at capacity.
• A four-hour private fishing day at $1,000 for the boat splits to $250 each among four anglers, and the fish box comes home with you.

The pattern: for couples and trios, scheduled seats win on cost every time. Somewhere between six and ten people, depending on the boat, the lines cross, and past ten the private boat is frequently the cheaper option as well as the better one. Villa groups are exactly the parties this math favors, which is why the charter question comes up in nearly every large-group booking our team handles.

The charter types, mapped

St. Croix's private fleet sells five distinguishable days, and knowing which one you are shopping for shortens every phone call.

• The private monument run. A Buck Island day without the crowd, legal only aboard one of the five NPS-authorized concession operations. The concessionaire system, the per-seat trips and each operator's scheduled offerings are the subject of the Buck Island boat tours guide; this page covers the same companies wearing their charter hats.
• The powerboat day. A fast center-console or power catamaran with a flexible brief: snorkel stops, coastline sightseeing, a beach anchorage, lunch, repeat. The west coast is its natural home, for reasons the route section explains.
• The private sail. The same idea under canvas, slower and quieter, on the island's catamarans and trimarans. The wider daytime sailing scene is mapped in day sails and catamarans.
• The fishing charter. Its own culture, its own boats, its own economics; every fishing trip on this island is already a private charter by structure, and the fishing sections below treat it at length.
• The evening charter. Two hours at dusk with the boat to yourselves. The scheduled evening fleet, coast by coast, is covered in the sunset sails guide; note here simply that nearly every boat on this page will also run your group at sunset, with published private evening rates on the Christiansted side spanning roughly $400 to $1,500 at last check depending on hull and headcount.

Fishing charters are their own world

Sportfishing on St. Croix operates on different logic from the tour fleet. There are no per-seat fishing trips to speak of: the boats are hired whole, priced by the hour block, and crewed by a captain and mate whose job is finding fish. The vessels are purpose-built, center consoles and sportfishers rather than catamarans, and the day is measured in lines out, not stops made.

The reason the fishing is worth a dedicated boat sits three to ten miles off the island's east tip. Lang Bank curves around that corner of St. Croix in a horseshoe of steep drops where currents push bait to the surface, and the predators follow: mahi, wahoo, kingfish, tuna, and the billfish, blue marlin, white marlin and sailfish. The short run matters as much as the fish do. Where many destinations spend two hours reaching blue water, a St. Croix boat can be fishing serious depth within minutes of clearing the harbor, which is why half-day offshore trips here are a genuine product rather than a compromise.

The Virgin Islands carry weight in this sport. The territory's waters have produced two dozen IGFA world records over the decades, headlined by a 1,282-pound blue marlin brought to the scale in 1977, though most of that billfish fame attaches to the North Drop fished out of St. Thomas. St. Croix fishes its own bank, quieter and closer, and the local fleet works it year-round. Crews here troll rigged ballyhoo and lures along the drops for the pelagics, run deep-drop trips for bottom species, and work the flats and shorelines inshore for tarpon, snapper, jacks, mackerel and barracuda.

Two practical notes define the experience. First, boats are small by design: offshore trips typically carry four to six anglers, so a fishing charter is an intimate day even at full capacity. Second, no captain anywhere promises a catch, and the good ones say so up front. Ask what has been biting the week you call, and ask the boat's policy on billfish, which are released by broad practice, and on the rest of the catch, which most crews will clean for your villa kitchen. The island's shorter overview of the offshore scene lives in the deep-sea fishing guide.

The fishing calendar

Fish move with the seasons, and the published guidance for Virgin Islands waters sketches a usable year. Treat it as pattern rather than promise; the ocean did not read the brochure.

Weather overlays the fish. Winter trade winds put a lump in the offshore water exactly when the wahoo arrive, so anglers prone to seasickness should weigh the inshore option in those months; summer offers the flattest offshore days of the year alongside the marlin. The island's wind-and-rain year is laid out in the weather guide.

Fishing licenses for charter guests

The U.S. Virgin Islands licenses recreational fishing. As announced by the territory's Department of Planning and Natural Resources, anyone fishing recreationally in Virgin Islands waters needs a license issued through the GoOutdoorsUSVI system, and that includes guests on a charter fishing trip, who apply for an Individual Recreational Angler license; the boats themselves carry a separate charter-vessel license. Published exemptions at last check made the license free for those under 16 or over 62, active-duty military, and several other categories, with modest fees for everyone else.

In practice this lands lightly on visitors. The application is online, several operators fold the paperwork into booking, and at least one local boat publishes that licenses come included with its fishing gear. The correct move is one question when you reserve: does the boat handle guest licenses, or do we register ourselves before the trip? Ask it, do whichever answer requires, and the subject never comes up again. Rules change and enforcement details are the operators' daily business, so let the captain's current answer outrank anything printed here.

The operators, one by one

Every company below was verified against its own published pages at last check. Boats change hands and prices move, so confirm details when you book, and treat an unreachable website or a silent phone as the signal it usually is on a small island.

Caribbean Sea Adventures

The island's largest fleet is also its deepest private-charter menu. From King's Wharf in Christiansted the company charters its power catamarans Celebration, Good Times and Smooth Recovery and its sailing catamarans Wave Dancer and Inconceivable for full days, half days and evening runs, with no other guests aboard and the itinerary set with you, monument snorkeling included where the authorization applies. Its sportfishing arm runs separately out of Green Cay Marina on the East End, dock C, slip 32: private trips of four, six or eight hours published at $1,000, $1,300 and $1,600 at last check, six passengers maximum, departing at 7 a.m. or noon, with captain, crew, gear, bait, ice and water included and food, drinks and gratuity on you. Target list as published: blue and white marlin, wahoo, tuna, mahi and barracuda.

Big Beard's Adventure Tours

The highest-volume Buck Island operator makes its whole fleet, the sailing cat Renegade and the power cat Adventure, available for private hire, from weddings under sail to full-boat group days, and publishes discounts for parties of 20 or more. Rates are quoted by phone rather than posted, and the company asks that private charters be reserved by calling its Christiansted office directly. For a large group that wants the classic monument day without strangers aboard, this is one of the shortest paths to it.

Jolly Roger Charters

Captain Mike's 42-foot catamaran in Christiansted harbor sells private days alongside its scheduled monument trips, and the operation's stated philosophy, keeping passenger loads deliberately small, carries into its charter work. Arrangements run person-to-person: contact the boat, shape the day, and expect a 50 percent deposit to hold it. A middle option for groups that want a full-size catamaran without a corporate booking engine.

Buck Island Charters, Teroro II and Dragonfly

The East End trimarans from Green Cay Marina are the island's purest sail-charter product, wind-only boats with no engines installed, run by Captains Heinz and Carl since 1968. Dragonfly, the 38-footer, is exclusively a private boat, published at $1,200 for up to eight guests at last check; Teroro II, the 42-footer, charters at $1,800 for up to 20 with hourly extensions available, alongside its scheduled sails. Half the appeal is the departure point: villa guests on the East End can board three miles from Christiansted at the Tamarind Reef dock, and the monument sits a short crossing away.

Lyric Sails

The 63-foot catamaran Jolly Mon, Coast Guard inspected for 49 passengers, is the island's biggest single charter platform and its readiest event venue. From the Frederiksted waterfront the company offers private day sails daily at last check, snorkeling the west end's reefs and shipwrecks on lee-calm water, and builds custom evening and celebration charters with catered food and full bar service for weddings, reunions and the rest. Rates are quoted per event. For any group past 25 people, this is effectively the only single hull that holds everyone.

Nep2une

The Frederiksted dive shop runs a tidy six-guest charter program from the pier aboard its boat, with the clearest published private price sheet on the island at last check: morning snorkel charters at $500 and afternoons at $450, fishing at $950 for a morning, $800 for an afternoon and $1,250 for a full day, sightseeing runs at $350, sunset trips at $400, and private dive charters from $550 to $875. Snacks and drinks come included. For a couple or a small family that wants a private boat without big-group pricing, these numbers are the benchmark to beat.

Down South Charters

The most flexible single hull working the island: a 36-foot Yellowfin center console with triple 300-horsepower outboards, refit in 2021, carrying up to 12 guests. The published menu runs fishing excursions and snorkel days of four to eight hours, custom family days, sunset cruises, and crossings to the sister islands under 40 miles north, with captain, fishing and snorkel equipment, safety gear, coolers, ice and water included and fishing licenses covered with the gear. Rates are quoted through its booking system rather than posted. Speed is the boat's argument: it puts more coastline inside one day than anything else its size here.

The fishing specialists

Captain Cook Charters runs offshore sportfishing plus sunset and adventure trips from Green Cay Marina aboard a 33-foot Pursuit, with details quoted by phone and back-to-back TripAdvisor awards on the wall at last check. Hook and Sun Fishing Charters, out of Christiansted harbor, publishes the fullest rate card in the fleet: offshore or inshore at $1,000 for four hours up to $1,600 for eight, deep-drop trips from $900, four passengers offshore and six inshore, boat-price rather than per-person, free fish cleaning, a $100 snorkeling add-on, and a cash-preferred policy with a 4 percent card fee. Fish On St Croix runs deep-sea trips for billfish, mahi, tuna, wahoo, swordfish and kingfish, and St. Croix Deep Blue Charters fishes offshore from Christiansted; both are review-listed rather than detail-published, so call. Gone Ketchin', a sportfishing boat long listed at Salt River Marina, had an unreachable website at last check; confirm it is operating before planning around it.

The bareboat question

Visiting sailors ask whether they can skip the captain and rent the boat alone, and St. Croix's answer is close to no. The island has no bareboat charter base, no fleet of self-drive rental boats, and no company whose business is handing visitors the keys; the region's bareboat capital is Tortola, an island group away. What exists here at last check is a thin scatter of listings on peer-to-peer platforms, most of them offered with a captain, occasionally with a bareboat option for charterers who can document real experience. Three further realities temper even that: Buck Island landings from a private vessel require a National Park Service permit and compliance with the monument's anchoring rules, the island's reefs and its north-shore weather punish casual local knowledge, and insurance terms on peer-to-peer hulls deserve close reading. The working conclusion for nearly every visitor: hire the captain. Several will hand a competent guest the helm in open water, which delivers most of the feeling at none of the risk, and it costs nothing to ask when booking.

A west-coast day on your own boat

The lee coast is where an open-brief charter day makes the most of itself, because the island's own mass flattens the water there and every stop sits minutes from the next. A representative day, assembled from what the west-side operators publish and run:

Board at the Frederiksted waterfront in the morning calm. The first stop can be the pier itself, whose pilings hold the island's most famous small marine life, seahorses, octopus and frogfish among them, detailed in the pier diving guide. Run north along the coast to the Butler Bay wrecks, where a cluster of sunken hulls sits shallow enough that snorkelers see real shipwreck from the surface. Anchor off Rainbow Beach for a swim and lunch, either from your cooler or with a beach bar a dinghy-length away. In the months when conditions and rules allow, the afternoon can carry south past the two-mile white strand of Sandy Point, admired from the rail: the refuge shuts to all visitors from April 1 until the end of August while the leatherbacks nest, and outside those months it admits people only on weekend days from 10 to 4, so the view from the water is frequently the only legal one, and captains know the current boundaries. Home with the sun still up, or hold the last hour and let the day end as a sunset run.

None of this is a fixed circuit. That is the point: the same coast supports a snorkel-heavy day, a beach-heavy day, a fishing morning that becomes a swimming afternoon, or a slow sail with music, and the private boat is what lets one group choose.

Buck Island and the East End on a private boat

The east side's charter day orbits the monument, and one line of law shapes all of it: commercial passenger landings at Buck Island belong exclusively to the five NPS-authorized concessionaires, so a private monument day means chartering one of those boats whole, and a private vessel of your own needs a park permit and must follow the monument's rules; the full picture lives in the monument guide. Chartered, the day gains what the scheduled trips cannot offer: the underwater trail at your group's pace, beach hours that stretch, and a boat that lingers where your snorkelers are happiest. East-based boats compound the advantage with the short crossing from Green Cay Marina or Teague Bay, and the East End shoreline, Green Cay, the Tamarind reef line and the calm bays, gives a charter plenty of day even without a monument landing.

As for circling St. Croix entirely: at roughly 22 miles from tip to tip, the island makes a full lap a long day of open water, and the south shore and east tip take wind and swell that the leeward coasts never see. No operator published a scheduled circumnavigation at last check, and most charter days sensibly stay on one coast. If the idea appeals, raise it with a captain and let the forecast answer; the plain truth is that the around-the-island day is occasional, conditions-dependent, and not the standard product. For covering distance, the published long runs are Down South's sister-island crossings, and the scheduled inter-island options are compared in the St. Thomas day trip guide.

Provisioning a charter day

What comes with the boat varies enough that one booking question, what do you provide and what may we bring, should be asked every time. The published patterns at last check: fishing and powerboat operators typically supply coolers, ice and water, with Down South listing exactly that plus parking, and Nep2une including snacks and drinks on its private runs; the big catamarans pour punch and run cash bars on scheduled trips and cater private events by arrangement, with Lyric building full catered-bar packages for its charters. Food on the small boats is generally yours to bring.

Villa kitchens make this easy. A packed cooler, sandwiches, fruit, water, whatever the group drinks, is standard practice and welcomed by most small-boat captains, with two cautions: confirm the bring-your-own policy at booking, since boats differ on alcohol, and skip glass, which no deck or beach wants. The groceries and provisioning guide covers where to stock up. The best charter-day dinner on the island may be the one you catch: with Hook and Sun cleaning fish free and most fishing crews doing the same, a wahoo landed at 10 a.m. can be on the villa grill by seven, and our private chefs guide lists the people who will cook it for you.

Published prices, deposits and weather calls

Published whole-boat numbers cluster into readable bands. Where an operator quotes only by phone, the bands still frame what to expect.

Booking mechanics follow island norms. Deposits of half the charter price are the published pattern where terms are posted, cancellation windows run on 48 hours where stated, and gratuity for the crew, 15 to 25 percent across the wider fleet's published guidance, rides on top of everything in the table. Cash retains its old power here; one fishing operator discounts for it outright by charging 4 percent on cards.

Weather works differently for charters than for scheduled seats, mostly in your favor. The captain still makes the call, on the water rather than the sky, but a private booking reschedules as one conversation instead of a seat-by-seat scramble, and a charter can often trade coasts on the same date, moving a blown-out north-shore plan into the Frederiksted lee. The standing advice from every other boating page on this site applies double when a whole boat is deposited: put the charter early in the week, so a postponed day has somewhere to land.

Passenger limits, kids and seniors

Every capacity number on this page traces to one federal line. Under Coast Guard rules, a vessel carrying six or fewer paying passengers can operate uninspected, skippered by a captain holding an Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessels credential, the license the trade calls a six-pack. Carrying a seventh paying passenger requires the vessel itself to hold a Coast Guard Certificate of Inspection, a stricter and costlier standard covering construction, stability and equipment, plus a Master-licensed captain. That is why the island's fishing boats and small charter boats stop at six regardless of how many the deck would physically hold, why Down South's inspected 36-footer can carry 12, and why the big catamarans publish exact figures like 25 and 49: the number is the certificate, and a legitimate operator will state it without being pressed. A boat that shrugs at its own limit is telling you something.

Fit the humans to the hull as deliberately as the law fits the count. Small children do well on charters precisely because the day can bend around them, short swims, an early return, a nap under the shade, though parents should confirm child-size life jackets at booking and expect fishing boats to suit kids old enough to hold interest through trolling hours. Seniors and guests with stiff knees should ask about boarding: marina docks with fixed cleats and boarding steps beat beach transfers, the power catamarans publish the friendliest boarding arrangements on the island, and center consoles ask more of hips and backs in chop than any brochure admits. Multi-generation villa groups splitting the difference often land on a power cat or the big trimarans: flat decks, real shade, room to spread out.

Comfort and seasickness by route

Charter routes sort cleanly by motion, and choosing with stomachs in mind costs nothing.

• Frederiksted lee, gentlest. The west coast sits in the island's wind shadow; its charter days run on the calmest water St. Croix owns, and queasy guests should simply start here.
• Christiansted harbor and the near north shore, mild. Protected water near town, livelier as boats work east or outside the reef line, with winter trades adding chop after midday.
• The Buck Island channel, moderate and seasonal. Short, fine on multihulls, bounciest on windy winter afternoons; morning crossings ride best.
• Offshore fishing, the real test. Lang Bank is open ocean, a trolling boat rolls at working speed, and the trip lasts hours by design. Anyone with a motion history should medicate 30 to 60 minutes before departure, ride low and aft, watch the horizon, and consider the inshore alternative in the windy months, when tarpon and reef species bite in flat water.

On any route, the standard kit earns its bag space: reef-legal mineral sunscreen, required in the territory since the 2020 ban on oxybenzone formulas, a hat that clips, a dry layer for the ride home, and a zip bag for the phone.

Charter types at a glance

Questions guests ask

How far ahead should we book a private charter?

Earlier than a scheduled seat, because there is exactly one of each boat. In the high season from mid-December through April, and for any holiday week or a date-specific event like a proposal, three to four weeks ahead is the comfortable margin and more costs nothing. Summer and fall usually work on one to two weeks' notice, though the fleet is small enough that a specific boat on a specific date can be gone in any month. Fishing boats around tournament periods and the big catamaran for weekend events book furthest out.

Do we need fishing licenses on a charter?

Yes, under the territory's rules as announced: recreational anglers in Virgin Islands waters need an individual license through the GoOutdoorsUSVI system, charter guests included, with published exemptions for kids under 16, seniors over 62 and several other groups. The load in practice is light, an online application, and some boats fold licensing into the booking or include it with the gear. Ask your operator at reservation time whether they handle it; their current answer beats any page, this one included.

Can a private charter land us at Buck Island?

Only if the boat is one of the five NPS-authorized concession operations, chartered whole, or your own private vessel holding a park permit and following the monument's anchoring and use rules. No other hired boat may land passengers there, whatever a listing implies. Chartering a concessionaire is the practical route for groups: the same authorized boats that run scheduled trips sell private days, and several publish exactly that. The concession list and each company's details live in the Buck Island boat tours guide.

What happens to the fish we catch?

Ask before you book, and you will like most answers. Billfish are released as broad practice. Food fish, wahoo, mahi, tuna, snapper, generally come home with the guests: one Christiansted boat publishes free fish cleaning, and most crews will bag fillets for the villa. Between the catch, a villa grill and the island's private chefs, the freshest dinner of your trip may be the one that pulled drag that morning. Boats' keep-and-release policies vary at the margins, so a one-line question settles it.

Can we rent a boat without a captain?

Realistically, no. St. Croix has no bareboat operation; what exists is a handful of peer-to-peer listings, mostly captained, occasionally bareboat for charterers with documented experience, and the practical barriers, park permits for Buck Island, reef navigation, insurance fine print, argue against it for visitors. The satisfying middle path is asking a captain to let you take the helm in open water, which several will do for a competent guest.

Is a charter worth it for just two of us?

Sometimes, and the west end is where the math works. A published $400 to $500 private sunset or snorkel run beats two seats on nothing, but it buys a proposal-grade private evening for less than many couples spend on a resort dinner. For ordinary days, two people do better on scheduled trips and should save the charter budget for the one moment that wants privacy. From six people up, the whole-boat option starts winning on price as well as experience.

What does the weather do to a chartered day?

The captain decides, usually the evening before or at dawn, reading the sea state rather than the clouds; gray skies over flat water sail happily. A chartered boat has more escape routes than a scheduled one, most usefully the coast swap into the Frederiksted lee when the north shore is up. When a day does scrub, operators reschedule first and refund against their published terms, commonly 48-hour windows, if no date works. Book the charter early in your stay and a blown morning becomes a moved morning.

Charter days from our villas

Geography does half the planning. Guests in our East End homes sit minutes from Green Cay Marina, where the sportfishing boats and the charter trimarans board; from The Cerulean and The Buck Island Overlook, the monument a chartered boat will circle is already in the window, and groups filling those houses charter whole boats as a matter of routine. Dragonfly and Moko Vista share the same short drive to the docks. West-side guests at Sunset Sea-Clusion have the Frederiksted pier boats and the big catamaran a few minutes away. Our on-island team charters these boats for guests all season and can match the group, the date and the day you want to the right hull.