Marina Cay

Marina Cay is small enough that I circled the whole thing on foot in under fifteen minutes, and I wasn’t rushing. It’s an eight-acre dot of an island sitting in the channel between Beef Island and Great Camanoe, and its whole story is tied up in one American couple, Robb and Rodie White, who bought it in the 1930s and built a house here with almost nothing, an experience Robb turned into a memoir called “Our Virgin Island” that later became a movie. The original stone foundation of their house is still up on the island’s low summit, and standing there looking out at the reef and the channel, it wasn’t hard to understand why they never wanted to leave.

The reef that rings the island is the real draw now — it’s shallow, close to shore, and dense enough with staghorn coral and reef fish that I didn’t need a boat or a guide, just fins and a mask off the beach. I found a hawksbill turtle grazing unbothered about ten meters out, and a school of squid hanging in perfect formation in the shadow of the dock, which is not something I’d seen anywhere else in the BVI. There’s a small Pusser’s outpost on the island now, a scattering of simple rooms, and not much else, which is exactly the point.

I came over on a day-trip ferry from Trellis Bay and nearly missed the boat back because I lost track of time floating over the reef. Marina Cay doesn’t demand much of your attention, which somehow means it gets all of it.

When to go: Any calm day works, but arrive early if you want the reef to yourself before the day-trip crowds from the surrounding resorts show up around midday.