I am trying to figure out when the last ferry should leave St Thomas for Tortola. Ok, really I'm asking for a consensus on how late TTOL'ers think one can arrive in STT and still make it to Tortola that day. Over the last dozen or so years we've pushed our luck a few times both coming and going but we have never been burned, yet. That's getting a little old and so am I. But the airlines are conspiring against us on arrival time, ticket prices and some crazy short layovers.

Part of the problem is we've been pretty lucky with airfare, heck last November we hit an all time low of $465pp (but we arrived late, like 4:30 late, were told there was no RTFF at 5:30 that we expected, had to rush to Redhook only to wait until 7:30 for it to leave - on the way back I didn't know the 10am ferry was the only one that would get us to CA in time for our 4pm flight, we barely made it - stressful).

So just for excruciating fun I checked bestofbvi, vinow and the RTFF, Native Son and Smith's websites. Looks like 4pm or so should be a good time to pick? Yeah, I know there might be a RTFF at 5:30 or at least 4:15, maybe a Native Son at 4:45 or maybe a Smith's at 4:30 all leaving CA and that the ferry from Redhook should leave at 5pm. But I know that everything listed doesn't always happen. And a water taxi or flying into EIS doesn't work well at all for us.

So if you had to put a hard time on airport arrival time to make it to the "last" ferry when would you consider it safe, when would you consider it ok if everything works out and when would you say no way? In your own mind when do you think the last "I'm pretty sure it will go today" ferry leaves St Thomas? I'm not really worried about which ferry terminal it leaves ST Thomas from or if we have to taxi from WE or RT.

BTW I will be calling the ferries a few times right before we leave and I'll contact Kevin to get help get us wherever we need to be.