Editor's Letter
Here’s to one less division among these beautiful islands.
Sure, you’ll need your passport when traveling through the invisible boundary that divides the United States and British Virgin Islands. And, yeah, custom fees and rules and regulations will need to be recognised—that all comes with the territories’ divide under dual ownership. But with one small step, we’d like to move forward with a subtle unification measure to bring our neighbours closer and include them more frequently in our publication. You’ll notice that we’ve dropped the British identifier from our name and will now move forward with the all encompassing title, Virgin Islands Property & Yacht. And what does this mean for you, the reader? Quite simply, more expansive coverage—from Anegada to St Croix. And to our friends in the USVI, we’re now also expanding our distribution to reach your storefronts, villas and vessels. So let’s toast to unity—and to one less divide.
To accentuate our commitment to our cross-boundary community, I called upon two legal experts to map out our territories’ sometimes confusing laws and regulations as they pertain to land purchases. The BVI and USVI consultants worked well together to answer tricky questions regarding foreign ownership, while highlighting the advantages of buying at either paradisiacal location. Our salty scribe David Blacklock also chimed in with an insightful and analytical piece on our connected but bordered waters’ sailing markets.
We also got a chance to visit Belmont Estate’s South Watch, a property with stunning views that peer out across Sopers Hole and St John, and further past St Thomas. After speaking to the proprietor, I’d later find out that on a clear night they can even catch a glimpse of St Croix’s glowing horizon in the distance.
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Writer Traci O’Dea overcame a 12-hour time difference to converse with Tortola’s Aragorn Dick-Read and St Thomas’ Edney Freeman, two Virgin Islands artists who traveled all the way to China to bring the Caribbean culture to the China Changchun Sculpture Symposium. Keeping in formative fashion, Aragorn torched his giant fireball sculpture in China during August’s full moon celebration.
I spoke with the folks over at the Jost Van Dyke Preservation Society, who have recently focused their efforts on the BVI sister island of Great Tobago, a national park situated off Tortola’s northern shore. There, the magnificent frigate bird thrives among its only documented Virgin Islands habitat, but heavy fishing has threatened to diminish their existence there. I caught up with a longtime Virgin Islands fisherman who claims his roots in St Thomas but now fishes and works from Jost Van Dyke, who explained to me what is needed to help extinguish this problem on Great Tobago.
Continue through our pages to find plenty more interest pieces, including a look at the fascinating sargassum seaweed, which recently visited us from thousands of miles away. But whether you flip our pages on Tortola, Virgin Gorda, St Thomas, St John or St Croix, we want to thank you for reading our publication, and encourage you to contact us with story suggestions as we move forward.
…Here’s to the Virgin Islands
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