Excerpted from St. John Off The Beaten Track © 2006 Gerald Singer

Why Brown Bay?
Brown Bay's white sand beach is almost certain to be deserted as there is no vehicle access and the trail entrance is far from the more populated areas of the island. Also, Brown Bay is a poor anchorage for vessels coming by sea, so it is uncommon to see yachts at anchor here.

When you are out hiking the trails, Brown Bay Beach is a perfect place to cool off, relax, take a swim and explore the ruins. There are shady places to sit, and usually a cooling ocean breeze. This is a great spot to enjoy a picnic lunch in a natural and private setting where you can often enjoy having such an idyllic spot all to yourself.

Getting There: (see map)
Starting from the Coral Bay Moravian Church, go east about a mile on the East End Road (Route 10.) After you pass Estate Zootenvaal, you will cross a small concrete bridge. Turn left just after the bridge and park on the dirt road. Twenty yards up the road you will come to a fork. As Yogi Berra, the famous baseball player, once said, "When you get to the fork in the road, take it!" The right fork is the beginning of the Brown Bay Trail. It is a three-quarter mile hike to the beach.

Brown Bay can also be reached by taking the Brown Bay spur trail off the Johnny Horn Trail. The Johnny Horn Trail connects Waterlemon Cay and the Moravian Church in Coral Bay. The Brown Bay spur trail is not maintained and can be very unfriendly because of the abundance of thorny "catch and keep" bushes.

Brown Bay Ruins
Brown Bay has some of the most extensive ruins on the island of St. John. To explore them proceed to the western end of the beach and then make your way further along the shoreline until you see the beginning of the ruins.

Here you will find the remains of an estate house bearing an old concrete plaque inscribed with the date1872 and bearing the initials "G-N". Notice the exceptionally well-crafted stone and brickwork that went into the construction of the old walls. You will also find ruins from an even earlier time including a sugar factory with its boiling room, cisterns once used for rum distillation, an old copper boiling pot, two horsemills from different periods, a storage building, an old well, an ox pound and two graves, one being that of a child.

Beachcombing
Also, an abundance of flotsam washing up along the beach makes for excellent beachcombing.

Snorkeling Brown Bay
The bottom of the bay is sand and grass, offering an easy entry. It is quite shallow at first, but deepens gradually providing access to excellent snorkeling further out from the beach. The snorkeling here is best on calm days when the water is not churned up and murky.

The most colorful and interesting area to snorkel in Brown Bay is around the point on the eastern side of the bay where there is a relatively shallow fringing reef, which slopes down to a depth of about twenty feet. There are several beautiful specimens of hard corals near the top of the reef, and on the sloping hillside is a garden of gorgonians, such as sea fans, sea whips and sea plumes. You will often see larger fish here due to the proximity of the deep Sir Francis Drake Channel.

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