Restaurants:
This is not the BVI and there's not a bar and restaurant on every beach. That said, we still planned half our meals ashore, and that worked out just fine.
Culebra: The main town of Dewey in Culebra has Mamacita's and The Dingy Dock as well as other places to eat. Good eats and cold beer. There's a number of small kiosks at Playa de Flamenco beach where you can buy pizza, dogs, more local fare, and just about any kind of drink you want.
Vieques: On the south side of Vieques is the small town of Esperanza, and there are several good restaurants there. We ate at Duffy's where the beer selection was gynormous. The food was great. The largest town, Isabella Segundo, is on the North Coast, with many places to eat and lots of shops as well as the supermarket. It's only a 15-minute van-ride away ($3pp before 6pm, $5pp after 6pm) if you choose to anchor off Esperanza the whole time it's reasonable to taxi back and forth.
Food/Ice: Available in Esperanza (Vieques) at the Green deli which is a 10 minute walk up-hill just out of town. Isabella II (Vieques) and Dewey (Culebra) have ice of course, as does Marina Del Ray just outside of Fajardo, PR (which has ice and Heineken right at the fuel dock, God Bless Them). There's also small store ashore at Marina Del Ray. If you're diving into Dewey for ice & Heineken you probably just want to anchor in Bahia de Sardinas (just south of town and the cut-through) and skip the tricky navigation into Ensenada Honda.
Trash disposal: you can dingy your trash to any of the above towns.
Water and fuel: This is the most problematic issue in cruising the SVI, but only if you run out! Water and fuel is available in Marina Del Ray and some other PR east-coast marinas that we did not visit. If you plan to visit St. Thomas you could get it at Crown-Bay Marina (closest to SVI) or at Yacht Haven Grand which is 2 miles farther east in Charlotte Amalie harbor).
Navigation:
It's highly recommended to get paper charts for the area. They are generally not available in the standard USVI/BVI cruising guide (by Scott). Older versions of the guide (2003-4 and older)have a section on the SVI. The best cruising guide for the area (IMHO) is "A CRUISING GUIDE TO PUERTO RICO INCLUDING THE SPANISH VIRGIN ISLANDS," 2nd., 2010 Stephen Pavlidis. Oceangrafix NOAA Charts #25653, #25664, #25663, are useful, as are Garmin electronic charts for the Eastern Caribbean (about $160 for the MicroSD chip).
Some Nav Notes: Navigation is generally straightforward, but care must be taken approaching Culebra and Ensenada Honda from the east. A charter boat went on the reef the day we had our chart briefing at CYOA. In the Ensenada Honda approach there are two Buoy #2's that are not all that far apart. Ugh. A shoal extends waaaaaaay out from the NW point of Vieques, and it's smart to carefully inspect the chart before approaching Green Beach from the North. Green beach is delightful and is located about 1/2 south of Pt. Anchor off the remanants of stone breakwaters in about 10 feet of water. We anchored in Puerto Real NE of Cayo Real in 10-12 feet of water south of Esperanza on Vieques. No mooring balls. We got good holding here (backed down at 1500 RPM) but I talked to a CYOA skipper who struggled for almost two hours to get an anchor set here in the grass. Sounds like we got lucky. Don't bother anchoring in the between the Cays near the big dilapidated pier. It's shallower than the chart shows. We slipped in there, and right back out again. Pavlidis missed the mark here a little.
