TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Cruise Ship arrival - then passengers to The Baths

We will be at Leverick Friday & Saturday night, 3/15 & 3/16. Friday night is for the BBQ and Saturday we have the Safari Truck to go around VG.

There are 2 cruise ships due to arrive at 8am at the Cruise Ship Pier. One with passenger capacity of 540 and the other with 2,258. (The ships are due for departure at 5pm and 6pm)

I want to know what time the crowds will hit The Baths. This is our only day to do the Baths and we want to make the most of it.

Do they take the passengers to Spanish Town and then cab it to the Baths?

Thanks!

Just saw this 2 weeks ago from my boat docked at ST. There will be a pod lifeboat from the ship anchored out in the harbor arriving Spanish Town at 900. They set up a welcome area at ST to take passengers by cab to baths. Then the pods of people started coming in arriving 915 to 930. My team at the Baths went over at by land at 800 with instructions to be down and up by 945...they made it up just in time for the s***show.

so to answer your question if you are mooring moor at 800 and be up to top no later than 930 and then back out. You may want to send them down from Leverick by taxi in the early morning or late afternoon. I have done that as well

or you can do late afternoon...

Quick question on logistics. We only have one day (of our week) with just one cruise ship in port. The rest of the days is always 2. If a Disney ship is in port 8-545, what would be a general time that group would tend to leave the baths? That appears to be our best day and we will go late afternoon. Just don’t know the timing. Thx.

I have generally found 230-3pm is the best time. Also at 10am you have multiple day boats from STT that arrive ST and cab over to Baths.

Thanks Everyone!

Agree with Mike above in terms of timing - the bottleneck is the path down and back up.

As has been posted before the cruise ship port arrive/departure schedule can be gotten at http://bviports.org/cruise-schedule/

Unfortunately it seems that the schedules are posted on the 1st of the month. (At least March's wasn't posted until March 1)
Which is a bummer planning for our trip the 1st week in April!
Makes it harder to map out an itinerary to avoid them and the path of all the rest of the weekend charters!
Oh well, it'll still be sailing in the Caribe!
Randy

Try this: http://crew-center.com/tortola-bvi-cruise-ship-schedule-2019

Thanks mfringsley!!! Will add this to my bookmarks
R

Does that link show all cruise-ships in the BVI? Or just those on the pier in Roadtown?

Just wondering if it includes the other spots these monsters have begun to lurk...JVD, Norman Island etc?

Christo
Looking into it further my observations are;
1) The link I posted as I mentioned seems to be posted at the 1st of the month. So limited but does have location, #pass, just only for that month
2) The link mfringsley posted does have cruise dates all into 2019 (you need to go into each ship name and download/view the PDF of the schedule, if one exists for the year) but I found there is limited info as to size of ship (ie #passengers) and where docked (Roadtown, Spanish Town,JVD).

I found a better(?) link at https://www.cruisemapper.com/
that allows you to search worldwide by area (Bahamas-Caribbean-Bermuda), the date range interested in,and island(I used Tortola,Virgin Gorda,and St Thomas in separate searches to narrow the Caribbean down (As well as a number of other criteria).
A search then gives a list of ships itineraries in which you can see the exact schedule when each is selected. To get the #pass, you'll have to then search the Ships tab for a specific ship to find all the specs.

Given all 3 links in total, I think I have a good idea now of cruise ships in the area.
Randy

Thanks Randy, that's excellent info.

Now I just need to work out when the MIT crowd will be descending on the islands!

They're usually around Memorial Day weekend.

Thanks Tradewinds. I have no idea what that is, but no doubt google will have the answer!

Do they usually start then? or finish up?

Hey Randy,

We will be down the 1st and 2nd week of April, on a Lagoon 450 named "Stella", stop for a cold one if you see us out there!

They start the latter part of May.

I think they might just be late in updated it. I had the cruise ship schedule at the end of last year for this Feb 19. Maybe they do 1x per quarter but this list was great as it is concise and not much work. Thanks to whomever let me know about it as it saved us at the Baths.

Ann the vast majority of cruisers (from Road Town) will be hitting VG around 9:30 and the Baths shortly after so 7:30 - 8AM would be ideal. But I'm not sure what time the cruise ship-sponsored ferry hits VG...
And some may be swimming or being transferred in from a mooring a little later, but that would be a small number...

GettinBye, the most popular return ferry will be at 3, 3:30 and 4 depending on the ship departure times so anytime after 3PM should be clearing up.

The worst bottleneck is in the Baths where you don't want a crowd, you often see a group coming from both directions which can make for a mess (some guides will start from the Devil's Bay side..).

And we also check the individual cruise line sites that week to see if there are changes here before cruise calendar sites pick it up.

Will keep a lookout Colleen (Orange_Burst)! The 8 (4 couples) of us will be on a 43' cat Moonshadow (old Moorings) 3/31-4/7.
Randy

We arrive March 29th, spend 3 nights in CGB, then on the boat April 1-12.

This is a link for cruise ships coming to Tortola for the year


Tortola cruise ship calendar

We are coming the first part of May and will miss most ships.