Anegada

From our visits to Anegada

November 2025, with my family, aboard the catamaran ATLAS, one night at anchor.

We left the North Sound after breakfast and were anchored off Setting Point before noon. The tender dropped us at the pier, and the first drink was at the thatched bar right there, with the anchored boats in view.

Then a ride across the island. Flamingos in the pond from the road, and Cow Wreck Beach Bar by midday: flags and t-shirts on the ceiling, red chairs on the sand, the kids straight into the water with a bodyboard. The beach was empty in both directions.

Back at Setting Point in the afternoon for a lime and coconut at Potter’s on the pier, then out to Loblolly for Big Bamboo and on to Anegada Beach Club for the pool and the sunset from the beach in front of the tents. Dinner ashore at Setting Point, where the table had a Welcome ATLAS sign on it and the lobster came out at six pounds.

Next morning the tender ran us out to Conch Island: mounds of shells taller than us, dropped there by the fishermen who clean their catch on the spot, with Horseshoe Reef breaking on the horizon behind them.

Mo Pristas, Co-founder, DMA Yachting, November 2025

Setting Point: the anchorage, Potter’s and the lobster restaurants

Setting Point is the anchorage and the restaurant row, both at once. The yachts come in through the buoyed channel in the reef and anchor in shallow sand off the piers, so the tender ride to dinner is two minutes. Captains take the channel in daylight with the sun high, which is why the crossing leaves the North Sound after an early breakfast.

Four restaurants stand on the water within a short walk of each other: the Anegada Reef Hotel, Potter’s by the Sea on its pier, the Lobster Trap, and the Wonky Dog. All four grill lobster over driftwood and sea grape, split and served plate-sized; the crew books the table for you, usually the morning you arrive. Fresh Anegada lobster is seasonal, with the fishery closed roughly August through October and open again from 1 November. Our BVI restaurants guide has the full picture of dinners ashore.

A mile west along the same shore is Pomato Point, an empty beach with room to anchor and nobody on it, which is why it made our list of secluded BVI anchorages. It is the quiet alternative for the night if Setting Point is busy.

Which restaurant for lobster night

• Potter’s by the Sea: on the pier, t-shirts and stickers on every post, water under the floorboards. The drink-after-the-beach bar, and a lobster dinner with the tenders tied up beside your table.
• The Lobster Trap: its pier is lit up in colour after dark and the tables sit over the water. The dinner most of our guests end up at.
• Anegada Reef Hotel: the oldest of the four and the calmest, with the beach grill in front of the hotel.
• Wonky Dog: the later, louder one, with cocktails after the lobster.

The west end: Cow Wreck Beach and the Cow Wreck Beach Bar

Cow Wreck Beach on the north-west shore is the beach most guests come to Anegada for. It is a long strip of white sand with the reef breaking far out, so the water in front of it stays knee-deep for a hundred yards, with nothing but low scrub behind it. The name is the cargo of cow bones that washed ashore from a wreck in the 1800s.

Cow Wreck Beach Bar sits at the back of the sand: flags and signed t-shirts on the ceiling, picnic tables under the roof, and a row of red chairs down on the beach. Lunch is conch fritters, lobster and rum punch, and it is the kind of place where the kids stay in the water while the adults stay at the bar.

Yachts cannot anchor on this side; the reef keeps them on the south shore. From the Setting Point pier it is a 20-minute taxi ride across the flats, and the open-top Mokes lined up by the pier are the island’s rental cars if you would rather drive it yourself.

The north shore: Loblolly Bay, Big Bamboo and Anegada Beach Club

Loblolly Bay on the north shore is the snorkel beach. The reef comes in closer here than anywhere else on the island, so you swim out from the sand to coral heads, fans and reef fish rather than going by tender; it is one of the stops in our BVI snorkeling guide. Big Bamboo, painted blue and green under the sea grapes, does lunch and drinks at the back of the beach.

Anegada Beach Club, at Keel Point just west along the shore, is the island’s one resort: safari tents on the dunes, a pool with a palapa bar, and the kitesurfing school that works the flats in front of it. It is the place for a late-afternoon drink, a sunset from the beach, or a dinner that is not lobster.

The way to do the north shore is in the afternoon, after Cow Wreck: Loblolly for the snorkel, the beach club for the sunset, and a taxi back to the pier for the tender to the boat.

The interior and the reef: Flamingo Pond, Conch Island and Horseshoe Reef

The flats in the middle of the island are salt ponds, and the western one is Flamingo Pond. Caribbean flamingos were brought back here in 1992 after being hunted out, and the flock now numbers in the hundreds. You see them from the lookout on the road to the beaches; from the air they are a pink line in the brown water.

Conch Island is off the east end, near the settlement, and it is exactly what it sounds like: mounds of conch shells, some taller than a person, that generations of fishermen have dropped in the same spot after cleaning their catch. It is a 15-minute tender run from Setting Point, best in the morning light, with the sea breaking on the horizon behind it.

That line of breaking water is Horseshoe Reef, 18 miles of coral that reaches about halfway back to Virgin Gorda. It is protected: no anchoring on the reef, and the wreck diving on it is by permit with a local operator. For guests, the reef is what you snorkel from the north-shore beaches and what you see from the tender, not somewhere the yacht goes.

Fitting Anegada into the week

Anegada is not a spot on a route, it is a routing decision: one full day and a weather call. The rule our captains use is to go mid-week from the North Sound or Scrub Island, after Virgin Gorda, on the first settled forecast, and to give it the night rather than the afternoon. Deep-draft yachts skip it because the anchorage is shallow; catamarans and power catamarans are the boats it was made for.

Passage times as our boats sail them:

• North Sound to Setting Point: 14 miles, under an hour on a power catamaran, about three hours on a sailing catamaran.
• Scrub Island or Trellis Bay direct to Anegada: the run many captains prefer, about the same time, with the return leg then going to Jost.
• Setting Point back to Guana or Scrub Island: 20 miles south-west with the sea behind you, two to three hours under sail.
• March and April are the high-wind months, and the weeks most likely to lose the Anegada day. If the day says no, the loop continues to Jost with a day in hand.

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