Oualie Beach is a small beach at the north west corner of Nevis. After the very long Pinney’s Beach that runs the length of the west side, it’s probably the only other feasible-ish anchorage on Nevis in normal trade conditions.
The challenge with Qualie Beach is that it is very shallow, so deeper draft boats will struggle. It quickly gets to 6-7’ in most of the bay. In the image below, the red lines show the area we couldn’t anchor with our 7’ draft boat. Guide books will tell you that you can “tuck in” the headland at the north end, but the shallows make this difficult. Our result was that we had to anchor further out and were more exposed. Wind we like as it keeps us cool, but when we were there there was a north swell that came through the The Narrows between St Kitts and Nevis and did a good job rocking us to sleep. That and the ferries that run all night to St Kitts.
Oualie Beach is home to the Oualie Beach Resort, “a family owned and operated, beach front hotel. The hotel offers 22 rooms in traditional style “gingerbread” cottages, all right on the beach”. The hotel has a bar and restaurant that seemed quite pleasant. We didn’t eat there, discovering that the most excellent Indian Summer Restaurant delivered to Oualie Beach (very highly recommended). The bay is also home to several activity outfits. One of the major dive shops, Scuba Safaris is there, and Nevis Water Sports, Deep Sea Fishing and Wheel World bicycle Shop.
The northern headland was pretty good snorkeling, and a fun thing we did was to dinghy round the headland to Lover’s Beach on the other side. We walked the mile or so down the beach as big surf crashed in. In several places the sand was completely volcanic black. Getting the dinghy back into the water was seal-worthy with the 5’ waves!
