Great Cruz Bay

Great Cruz Bay Beach at a glance

Verified Oct 9, 2026.

Conditions today at Great Cruz Bay Beach

As of 7:00 AM on Oct 16, 2026, island time. Read each morning from the National Weather Service, DPNR, the National Park Service and Open-Meteo; the bay opens southwest, by our read from the map.

Sea state

Sheltered. The swell is from the east at 0.9 m, period 5 seconds; Great Cruz Bay Beach opens southwest, so the bay sits in the lee.

Open-Meteo wave model at the nearest ocean cell; the bay's opening is our read from the map.

Rip current risk

Low. Surf around 3 feet, east winds around 15 mph.

National Weather Service San Juan, surf zone forecast for St Thomas, St John and adjacent islands, issued 3:51 AM.

Water test

Not sampled, week of Oct 9, 2026 (DPNR's site "Great Cruz Bay"). Met it in 44 of 44 weeks sampled since Aug 2, 2024. The advisory.

DPNR samples for Enterococci bacteria and turbidity weekly; a result after heavy rain can change within the week.

Park alerts

No alert names Great Cruz Bay Beach; the park posts 1 alert today.

National Park Service, Virgin Islands National Park alerts.

Rain

Dry through the day; the chance of rain peaks at 21%.

Open-Meteo hourly forecast at the pin.

The day

UV index up to 8; sunset 5:55 pm; sea 30 °C, 85 °F.

Open-Meteo.

Getting there

About 9 minutes by car from Cruz Bay. How to reach St. John: Airfare to St. John means a flight to St. Thomas, Car ferry from St. Thomas to St. John, How to get around St. John, St. John map, St. John weather by month, St. Thomas to St. John ferry, Things to do in St. John.

Nine minutes from Cruz Bay, over one hill

Great Cruz Bay Beach is 9 minutes by car from Cruz Bay by our measurement: south from the ferry dock, up the hill behind town and down the far side to the bay, where the road reaches the resort's gate at 300A Chocolate Hole.

There are two places to leave the car. The first is a small free lot at 18.32061, -64.78601, a dropped pin rather than a named lot, a minute's walk from the south end of the sand; Nathan, a St. John homeowner, parked there free on Oct 9, 2026. The second is the resort's own lot, his advice when you are booked on a boat trip or another activity that launches from the Westin. As of October 2026 the resort charges its rental guests $25 a day per vehicle for that lot, in force since June 2026. A taxi from town is the other way in: $9 for one person or $8 each for two or more, on the Virgin Islands Taxicab Commission's tariff in force since October 2022.

Is Great Cruz Bay Beach public?

The shoreline is public; the ground behind it is not. The resort's own page lists a private beach among its features, but section 402 of the Open Shorelines Act, in title 12 of the Virgin Islands Code, gives the public a standing right to use and enjoy every shoreline in the territory. It draws that shoreline from the low tide line 50 feet inland, or less where vegetation or a natural barrier comes first, and section 403 forbids any obstruction on the strip. The Department of Planning and Natural Resources puts it more shortly: beaches cannot be fenced off, and a resident denied access may report it to its Division of Coastal Zone Management.

The Act stops at the strip. It gives no right to cross private land to reach it, and none to the resort's chairs, pool or restrooms. In Kosick v. Bar-Sela, a Superior Court memorandum of Apr 2, 2007, Judge Edgar D. Ross wrote that "the purpose of the Act is to guarantee beach access to all not just the boating elite", but that was a remark in a ruling on a dog attack at Vessup Beach, St. Thomas, not on this beach.

So a visitor who is not staying here may be on the sand near the water, and the free lot is the way in by land that we know of.

A resort beach in front of the Westin

This is a resort beach, kept by the resort. Its own page calls the property 47 acres and names no lifeguard as of October 2026, so do not count on one. The chairs and restrooms behind the sand are for its guests, and a day visitor's shade is the palms along the front, in the one account that describes them. The food is the resort's too, and one of its three outlets, Snorkels Bar & Grill, the pool and beach bar, is listed as temporarily closed as of October 2026. The resort's dining page, read in October 2026, gives Mango Deli daily from 6:30 am to 9 pm and Lemongrass serving lunch to the beach from 11 am to 4 pm, with dinner from 5 pm every night.

The resort refurbished its main pool and whirlpool spa in August 2026, per its own notice, so both are newly redone for the season, and the beach and food service stayed open through the work.

The tradeoff: the sand is free and close to town, but everything behind it belongs to the resort, and the free lot is small. The park beaches along North Shore Road are a longer drive and state their fee, parking and rules.

Swimming in an anchorage

The water is shared with boats. Great Cruz Bay is one of the three St. John anchorages the Department of Planning and Natural Resources listed in a notice of July 18, 2020, with Coral Harbor and Chocolate Hole, so expect hulls and dinghies off the beach. We score the snorkeling 2 of 5: the accounts we read describe a sandy bottom with seagrass and name no reef off the sand, and the moorings share the water. Come here to swim.

Water quality is the department's to test. Its Beach Water Quality Monitoring Program samples popular swimming beaches each week for enterococci bacteria and turbidity, and its advisories of Sep 25, Oct 2 and Oct 9, 2026 each say no St. John beach was sampled, so there is no current reading for this water. The department's standing advice is to stay out of water fed by stormwater from guts and drains, and out of water that looks discolored.

Suits a guest of the resort or of a villa on the hills around the bay, and anyone with an hour before a boat trip from the Westin. Not a snorkeler after coral, and not anyone who wants a bay without boats.