The $24,000 Fee That’s Emptying St. Thomas Marinas
A dispute over vessel fees between two governments has been building since at least 2022. Here's the full, independently sourced timeline — from pandemic-era border rules to a federal trade report and an unresolved push for talks in Washington.
American Yacht Harbor in Red Hook has been the physical center of St. Thomas’s charter and sportfishing fleet for decades — the dock where the old Boy Scout marlin tournament weighed in, and the base for much of the day-charter business that keeps the marina’s slips full. Right now, that fleet is caught in the middle of a dispute between two governments that has been building, in cycles, for at least four years.
What follows is what’s verifiable, in order.
2020–2022: A pandemic head start
When COVID-19 hit, the British Virgin Islands imposed stricter and longer-lasting travel restrictions than the U.S. Virgin Islands did. The USVI, reachable more easily from the U.S. mainland and open sooner, became the region’s default charter-yacht destination during that window. Some of the biggest names in the business adapted to it directly: The Moorings, one of the world’s largest charter operators, extended its operations into St. Thomas, and BVI Yacht Charters soft-opened a new USVI base. Neither the total length of BVI’s closure nor a complete list of relocating operators is something ALL AT SEA has independently confirmed — but the direction of the shift, BVI-based charter capacity moving toward the USVI during the pandemic, is documented.
2022: The first flare-up
By November 2022, the two governments were already in a standoff over BVI trade-license and work-permit requirements for foreign charter operators and crew. Governor Albert Bryan Jr. threatened to regulate BVI-based vessel access to the USVI in response. BVI Premier Natalio Wheatley later said his government moved to eliminate those trade-license and work-permit requirements specifically to head off USVI retaliation. That resolution held for about three years.
February 2025: Fees replace permits as the flashpoint, and Bryan threatens tariffs
New BVI legislation moving through the House of Assembly proposed raising the BVI’s foreign commercial vessel fee from $400 to $24,000 a year, and the day-sail operator fee from $200 to $12,500. In response, Bryan called an emergency legislative session to propose a 25% retaliatory tariff on BVI goods. At a Virgin Islands Professional Charter Association (VIPCA) meeting around the same time, one USVI charter operator reported a 70% drop in business; the industry’s economic contribution to the USVI was then cited at more than $100 million annually.
March–April 2025: A pause, then a revision
Bryan and Wheatley met in the BVI and agreed to temporarily hold the new fees while reviewing the numbers. Wheatley committed to “crunch the numbers to ensure that we maintain equity.” The revised structure he presented that April kept the top-tier unlimited annual fee close to its original level — ultimately $24,000, reachable via a $7,500 base for up to seven entries plus $2,100 per additional entry — while trimming the day-trip operator fee from the original $12,500 proposal to $8,500. Water-taxi licenses were set at $2,500.
June 1, 2025: The new fees take effect
The revised BVI Commercial Recreational Vessel License framework went into force. The foreign-vessel annual fee had risen roughly 30-fold from its pre-2025 rate of $800; the day-charter fee had risen more than 40-fold from $200.
June 2025: The traffic starts moving the other way
Within weeks, USVI-based operators began relocating to the BVI to escape being classified as “foreign” vessels there. VIPCA documented &Beyond Yacht Charters moving its entire 21-vessel fleet to Virgin Gorda — its CEO cited the $24,000 fee as unworkable given that roughly 99% of his clients wanted BVI itineraries — and identified at least two other USVI charter companies doing the same. VIPCA’s response was to ask the USVI government for reciprocal fees on BVI-based vessels and stricter compliance enforcement, not for the BVI to reverse course.
It’s worth noting the USVI isn’t fee- and rule-free on its own side of this. BVI-based yachts picking up passengers in the USVI are capped at seven USVI pickups or drop-offs, a restriction with the stated purpose of preventing vessels from basing in the BVI while operating primarily, and with minimal local economic contribution, from the U.S. side. This dispute runs in both directions, even if the dollar figures involved are not symmetrical. (For the view from the charter operators themselves on the USVI side, BWSailing’s account of the fee structure’s effect on individual businesses is worth a look, though it presents only their side.)
December 2025: It goes federal
The U.S. Trade Representative’s 16th Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) Report to Congress flagged the BVI’s fee changes as a “trade-distorting measure,” citing an estimated 5,000 USVI jobs and $166 million in local economic contribution tied to marine tourism, and noted that USVI operators had been forced to close or relocate as a result. The report raised the possibility that BVI could lose CBERA trade benefits if the measure stood.
January 2026: A BVI voice urges caution — from inside the BVI
Myron Walwyn, leader of the BVI’s opposition, publicly urged his own government to negotiate with the USVI before the dispute drew in federal intervention that could, in his words, extend “beyond fees alone” to matters like visa waiver access. His comments show the BVI government’s position isn’t without internal BVI critics.
April 2026: An industry group sounds the alarm on both the numbers and the exodus
Project Fair Waters, a marine-industry coalition led by Kosei Ohno, proposed a CPI-indexed alternative fee (around $1,900 a year rather than $24,000) and reciprocal unlimited access between the two territories. The coalition estimated more than 300 vessels had shifted operations from the USVI to the BVI since the June 2025 fee change took effect — a figure ALL AT SEA has not independently verified, sourced to the coalition’s own count.
September 2026: Six federal agencies, an ultimatum, and an unresolved deadline
At a September 17 meeting in Washington, representatives from the Departments of the Interior, State, Homeland Security, and Commerce, plus the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Small Business Administration, raised questions about the BVI framework’s effects on U.S.-flagged vessels, businesses, and passengers. The next day, Bryan formally proposed an emergency Inter-Virgin Islands Council meeting in Washington with federal agencies participating, and asked for the BVI government’s written confirmation by September 25. On that date, Bryan publicly called the fees “silly,” said he had been seeking a meeting with BVI officials for roughly 18 months without success, and put the cost to the USVI yacht industry at more than $100 million in lost revenue.
Where it stands today
As of this writing, ALL AT SEA has not been able to confirm whether the BVI government met Bryan’s September 25 deadline, or the final date of the proposed Washington meeting — reporting has referenced both “the week of October 12” and an “October 2” session, and we haven’t been able to reconcile which is current.
On the ground in St. Thomas, the visible effect has already reached beyond the charter fleet: the Virgin Islands Game Fishing Club, which revived a release-scored blue marlin tournament in 2025 for the first time since the old Boy Scout tournament faded out around 2018, did not run it again this year, a decision that tracks with the same North Drop access questions driving the larger dispute.
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Chris Kennan has written for ALL AT SEA since 2005.
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