The original barefoot bar island — Foxy's New Year's parties, the Painkiller's birthplace at Soggy Dollar, and 300 souls on the Caribbean's most celebrated sailing atoll
Jost Van Dyke is the smallest of the four main British Virgin Islands — a hilly island of just 8km² with a permanent population of around 300 people and more bars per capita than almost anywhere on Earth. Great Harbour is the main village: a single row of beach bars directly on the sand, with no connecting roads to the wider world. The island has been the centrepiece of Caribbean sailing culture since the 1970s when Foxy Callwood opened his legendary bar. The Soggy Dollar Bar at White Bay — where you swim ashore from your anchored boat — invented the Painkiller cocktail.
Jost Van Dyke was named after a Dutch privateer who operated in the area in the 17th century. It was lightly settled by Quakers from the mid-18th century, who established a small Free African community. The island's modern identity was almost entirely created by Philicianno 'Foxy' Callwood (born 1938), who opened Foxy's Tamarind Bar in 1968 and built a tourism economy around the New Year's Eve party that now draws hundreds of charter boats to Great Harbour. The island has no ATM, no supermarket, and no traffic lights — and has no plans to change any of that.