The floating bar Angel’s Rest at Hansen Bay is close enough to shore to allow swimmers access while allowing passing small power boats to pull alongside.
ROUND BAY — Although official Virgin Islands Gubernatorial residences have been a hot topic of late — with Gov. Kenneth Mapp addressing some public criticism of the five-figure monthly rent on his official residence on the east end of St. Thomas and Gov. John P. deJongh reimbursing the V.I. government for more than $200,000 in security improvements to his private residence made during his two terms — the derelict landmark “Lt. Governor’s House” on the point in Hansen Bay St. John may stay in disrepair until another administration.
Built by Martin Sewer as the East End’s Moravian Church School, the ramshackle edifice on the rocky point has not been used in decades and would require extensive reconstruction, but at least there would be a bar within reach, or swim, at least — in the isolated East End of St. John.
The renowned floating bar left Frank Bay last month after laying over on the west end of St. John while traveling to and from a St. Thomas shipyard visit and returned to its Coral Bay mooring. Now it has resumed regular scheduled visits to Hansen Bay to serve the anchorage off one of two private beach beaches, drive-in customers and swim-in goers.
Vie’s Snack Shack on the neighboring beach has been the only commercial venture in the historic isolated community — which was a thriving “free” maritime community before the end of slavery in the rest of the then-Danish Virgin Islands — in recent decades as subdivisions have crisscrossed the peninsula which lies outside the boundaries of the Virgin Islands National Park and Coral Bay tourism has grown.