The Ferry That Could Knit the Eastern Caribbean Together

The islands are built for the multi-island trip. The sea between them is not yet a network. A serious regional ferry would change the map.

Stand on almost any hill in the Eastern Caribbean and you can see the next island. Getting there is another matter. Inter-island flights are thin and dear, the ferry links are a patchwork of national operators, and a traveler can spend more time and money hopping next door than flying home. The archipelago that should be one product behaves like a dozen.

A properly funded regional ferry network, with through-ticketing and a single fare framework, is one of the more obvious pieces of tourism infrastructure the region keeps not building. It would lengthen stays, spread spending across more islands, and turn the sea from a barrier into the connective tissue of a single destination.

The obstacles are the familiar ones: fragmented regulation, protected national carriers, and the cost of vessels. The prize is a trip no single island can sell on its own, the strung-together Caribbean journey, and it is sitting in plain water.