January in the Caribbean: Trade Wind Season

January is the most dependable month in the eastern Caribbean. The north-east trades settle into a steady fifteen to twenty knots, the air holds at twenty-seven or twenty-eight degrees, the sea sits a degree below that, and the rain, when it comes, is over in ten minutes. It opens the OUIJETS calendar because nothing about it needs to be worked around.

Eleven nights, two islands. The first half is Necker in the British Virgin Islands, taken whole, so that the only people on it are the ones you arrived with. The second half is St Barths, which is a different proposition entirely: a village, a harbour and somewhere to eat that is not your own dining room. Members who want the whole trip private stay on Necker and we extend it.

The days run on wind and water. The trades are strong and consistent enough in January for wing-foiling and kite on the north shore, the sailing across the Sir Francis Drake Channel is flat and fast, and Anegada is a comfortable day out with the reef on the way. On the quiet days there is nothing at all: tennis, the pool, a book, and a swim at four when the light drops. Connectivity is as present or as absent as you ask it to be, and most members ask for it to be absent.

This is the month where the flying does the heavy lifting. Neither island takes a long-range aircraft. Beef Island in the BVI is limited to mid-size types, and Gustaf III on St Barths is a six-hundred-metre strip with a hillside approach, a daylight-only rule and a special crew qualification, which in practice means turboprops. We therefore route the metal into St Maarten, San Juan or Antigua and move you the last leg by turboprop, helicopter or boat. It reads like a complication. Handled properly it is the best twenty minutes of the trip.

Necker is not a hotel and is not booked like one. It is an exclusive-use island and we hold dates on it a long way out. On St Barths, Rosewood Le Guanahani on Grand Cul-de-Sac is our preferred partner property and the one we return to.

Ask your advisor about whole-island availability over the first fortnight of January, chartering a sailing yacht for the middle days rather than staying ashore, and how early the St Barths villas and the Gustaf III slots have to be committed.