Gustavia. A small harbour with a very large New Year.

Port de Gustavia is small, beautiful and strictly limited. Yachts come in stern to the quay wall on their own anchor, and the working limit inside the harbour is around 60 metres, with a handful of longer berths on the warehouse dock managed carefully because of the weather exposure. Anything above that lies in the designated water outside the harbour or in one of the neighbouring bays, and comes ashore by tender to the dock in the centre of town. In practice, most of the yachts your party is likely to be joining in December and January are in the second category.

That single fact shapes everything else. The arrival point is not a berth with a gangway onto a quay. It is a tender dock a few metres from the shops, shared with every other yacht doing the same thing, at a moment when the town is full. The tender will have a slot rather than a standing arrangement, and that slot is the fixed point the cars, the flights and the dinner reservation all fit around. Give it to us as soon as the captain gives it to you.

Gustaf III is about 646 metres of runway with a hill at one end and a beach at the other. Only small certified types use it, typically the Pilatus PC-12, the Cessna Caravan, the Twin Otter and the Islander, and the pilots who fly in hold a qualification specific to the field earned through supervised landings. There is no runway lighting and the terrain rules out a night instrument approach, so the field is daylight only. None of this is a problem if it is planned for. All of it is a problem if a long haul into St Maarten is scheduled to land at five in the afternoon on 30 December.

The reliable shape of the day is therefore: land at St Maarten with daylight to spare, transfer to the hop, and be at Saint Jean with time for the car and the tender. The fast ferry from Philipsburg, around 45 minutes, is the honest fallback and is not subject to the daylight limit, but it is a different kind of arrival with luggage and needs deciding early. We will set the whole chain out in the proposal, including what happens if the long haul is two hours late, because over New Year it sometimes is. For the long haul see ultra long range jets and private jet charter; the onward hop is arranged as part of the same itinerary.

St Barths is steep volcanic ground with narrow roads, tight hairpins and very limited parking in Gustavia. The vehicle that works here is a compact four wheel drive or a small saloon, not a long wheelbase car or a people carrier. A car meets the aircraft at Saint Jean, runs over the hill to the town, sets down near the tender dock and then parks out of the way, because the streets around the harbour are effectively pedestrian in season.

The tender is the real transport. Confirm the landing point and the time with the captain the night before and again on the morning, tell us both, and build a margin in. Over New Year the dock works continuously, slots are short and a party that is ten minutes late loses its place. If anyone cannot manage a step down into a tender in a swell, say so at the planning stage: there is no alternative route to a yacht lying off. Luggage matters too, because light aircraft have real weight limits and the tender has less room again. Ask the crew for soft bags before you pack.

The Caribbean season runs from December to April and St Barths is at the centre of it. The last week of December is unlike anything else in yachting: a very large fleet of charter yachts gathers off Gustavia for the fireworks, the town is full, the tender dock runs to a timetable, and villas, tables, cars and berths across the island are committed many months ahead. If New Year is the point of your trip, the planning conversation needs to happen in the spring, not the autumn.

The rest of the season is far more relaxed and, for most parties, better. January and February are settled and busy without being frantic. March brings the St Barths Bucket, a regatta that fills the harbour with large sailing yachts, and April brings Les Voiles de St Barth. Both compress the island's capacity again. Outside those dates the island is a simple place to arrive at: a short hop, a short drive, a short tender ride. If the charter runs on through the islands, see Antigua, Anguilla, the Caribbean page and Falmouth and English Harbour, the other main Caribbean embarkation point.