Build Your Own Port Day

What you are choosing between

The ship's excursion is a coach, a fixed itinerary and forty other people. It is straightforward, it is priced per head, and if it runs late the ship waits — which is a genuine advantage and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

A private day is your own car and driver, the stops you want, in the order you want, changed when you feel like it. Priced per vehicle, so a family of five pays what a couple pays. The back-on-board promise is ours rather than the cruise line's.

For two or more people the arithmetic usually favours the private day. For a solo traveller it often does not.

Three shapes that work

The beach day. Mullet Bay in the morning for the swim, Maho in the early afternoon for the arrivals bank. The best version of a beach day from this port and it uses about six hours.

The two-country day. Marigot for the market, Grand Case for lunch, back through the Dutch side. Shows you the French side properly rather than in passing.

The short day. Philipsburg on foot or by water taxi in the morning, then a car out to Simpson Bay for lunch and the lagoon. Good on a six-hour call where a long drive is not sensible.

How many stops

Three is comfortable on a nine-hour call. Each stop costs you the drive plus the settling in and out — that is twenty minutes of overhead beyond the driving itself.

Four works if two are brief. Five is a day looking out of a window, and we will say so rather than take the booking and let you find out.

The all-aboard maths

The advertised port hours are not the hours you have. Allow 30 to 45 minutes after docking for the gangway, and be back 30 minutes before all aboard.

A nine-hour call is really about seven and a half hours of usable time. We plan inside that number rather than the one printed on your itinerary.

The guarantee, stated properly

Your return is set by working backwards from your all-aboard with margin. If something on the road goes wrong it is ours to solve.

We are based at the terminal. Your ship's schedule is our schedule, and we are still here next week — which is the only real security an independent booking gives you and the reason to book with someone who lives here.

What it costs

Per vehicle for the day, waiting included at every stop. The waiting is the part that matters: a taxi that drops you at a beach is not a taxi that is there at half past three when four ships' worth of people all want to leave at once.

The official tariff charges per person above two passengers — see the full rates and do the sum for your group.