Jack’s Beach Bar, Bequia: Best of the Grenadines

Jack’s Beach Bar, Bequia, is the closest thing the Grenadines have to a proper beach club, and it sits at the end of Princess Margaret Beach that almost every guide says it doesn’t. It’s a multi-level restaurant and bar built in layers into the hillside, with its own dinghy pier, sun loungers on the sand and a spa upstairs. For a crewed yacht charter guest anchored in Admiralty Bay, it’s a short tender ride and the most civilised lunch on the island. Get the timing right and it’s also the best table in the Grenadines for a sunset.

What Is Jack’s Beach Bar, Bequia?

It’s a beach club with a full kitchen, which makes it unusual in this island chain. Most of what passes for a beach bar in the Grenadines is a shack with a cooler and a hand-lettered sign, and that has its own considerable charm. Jack’s is the other thing: a contemporary open-sided building stepped into the hillside behind the sand, with a restaurant, a proper bar, loungers and umbrellas on the beach, beach service from ten in the morning, paddleboards for hire, a gift shop, and a small spa on the floor above.

Uncommon Caribbean, writing in December 2025, describes the style and decor as “contemporary-casual” (Uncommon Caribbean). That’s the right register. It isn’t a rum shack, and it isn’t a resort restaurant either.

Jack’s Beach Bar is a beach club and restaurant on Princess Margaret Beach, Bequia, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Built in layers into the hillside behind the sand, it offers a full restaurant, bar, sun loungers with beach service, paddleboard hire and an upstairs spa, and it has its own dinghy pier for guests arriving by boat.

It’s a fixture of most weeks we plan across the Grenadines charter destinations, because Bequia is the first proper stop south of St. Vincent and Admiralty Bay is where nearly every itinerary spends its first or second night.

Where Exactly Is It on the Beach?

Jack’s Beach Bar sits at the northern end of Princess Margaret Beach, the Port Elizabeth and Belmont end, not the far end that several published accounts describe. Uncommon Caribbean puts it plainly, placing Jack’s “at the northernmost end of the beach” (Uncommon Caribbean, December 2025). The practical consequence is that guests walking from town reach it first, rather than at the end of a hike.

Where does the confusion come from? Direction of travel. Cruising World’s 2024 account of the beach bars of Bequia is written walking north from Lower Bay: the writer climbs over the hill onto Princess Margaret Beach, passes another bar mid-beach, reaches Jack’s “at the far end,” and then carries on around the cliff to the Plantation, which is on the Belmont side (Cruising World). Read in sequence, his “far end” is the north end. Lifted out of sequence, it reads as the opposite.

Jack’s Beach Bar sits at the northern end of Princess Margaret Beach, Bequia, the end closest to Port Elizabeth and Belmont. Guests walking from Port Elizabeth reach it first, at the end of the path down from the headland, rather than at the far end of the beach as some published accounts suggest.

For a charter guest it resolves simply. Walking from Port Elizabeth, Jack’s is the first thing you come to. Tendering in, Jack’s has its own pier and you can land at the door.

What Is Princess Margaret Beach, and Why Is It Called That?

It’s a crescent of pale sand on the south shore of Admiralty Bay, four or five hundred metres long, backed by green hills and trees that throw real shade at the top of the sand. The beach was called Tony Gibbons Beach first, and plenty of Bequians still call it that.

The royal name is the newer one, and the story behind it is local tradition rather than documented history. The island says Princess Margaret swam here, and the dates attached to that range across most of a decade. At least one widely repeated version is internally impossible, pairing a 1958 visit with a honeymoon that took place in 1960.

What’s on firmer ground is the rest of the royal connection to these islands. Princess Margaret honeymooned in the Caribbean aboard the royal yacht in 1960 and was given land on Mustique, where she later built the only house she ever owned. It’s a story we cover in the guide to Basil’s Bar on Mustique.

The middle of the crescent is for swimming. The interesting part is the southern end, where volcanic rock breaks the sand into pocket pools that hold crabs and small fish at low tide, and there’s a small cave you can walk through. Wear something on your feet around the rocks; there are sea urchins in them.

How Do Charter Guests Get There?

By tender, always. Yachts anchor well off the beach in Admiralty Bay, so nobody steps off a boat straight onto this sand. The consequence for your day is simple: the crew runs you in and collects you, and you don’t think about it again.

Jack’s has its own dinghy pier, which is the detail that makes it work as a lunch stop. You land at the pier and you’re at the restaurant. Ins & Outs of SVG, the island’s visitor directory, puts it as “dock at the jetty if arriving by boat or water taxi” (Ins & Outs of SVG, 2019). Water taxis also work the bay, hailed by radio or waved down from the beach, if the crew are busy with something else.

Charter guests reach Jack’s Beach Bar, Bequia, by tender from the anchorage in Admiralty Bay, landing at the bar’s own dinghy pier. Yachts lie well off Princess Margaret Beach, so there is no direct landing from the boat. Water taxis also serve the bay, and the beach can be reached on foot from Port Elizabeth.

Bequia is one of those places where the anchorage is the point, and it belongs on the same list as the stops in our guide to hidden Caribbean anchorages — though Admiralty Bay is a good deal busier than most of them.

The Walk from Port Elizabeth

It takes fifteen or twenty minutes, and it exists because a local charity keeps rebuilding it. The route runs along the Belmont Walkway from Port Elizabeth, past the bars, dive shops and boutiques on the waterfront, out to Plantation House, then up over the headland and down a wooden staircase, where a path carries on to Princess Margaret Beach — arriving, as it happens, at Jack’s end.

The over-water section around Princess Point is the fragile part. Action Bequia, an island charity, rebuilt that span between June and August 2023 after rockfalls, doubling the number of piers, at a cost of EC$269,956 from its own funds (Searchlight). Hurricane Beryl damaged it again in July 2024, and the charity repaired it and reopened the trail before the end of that year. Its work was recognised with an environmental award at the 2025 SVG Sailing Week awards (Searchlight).

Writing in Caribbean Compass in March 2026, Chris Doyle and Lexi Fisher describe the full route in the present tense — the walkway, the climb, the wooden staircase, the path to the beach (Caribbean Compass). It’s a coastal structure on an exposed point, so if the walk is the reason you’re going ashore, have the crew confirm it’s open that week.

From the far end of the beach a second trail climbs over Princess Point, with stairs cut into the cliff and a boardwalk hung off the rock, and drops down into Lower Bay. That’s the walk to do if you have a whole afternoon.

What Is Jack’s Beach Bar Known For?

Caribbean-influenced seafood and burgers, with rum punch alongside. The short menu of house dishes is what Jack’s is known for, and the Bequia Beach Hotel group, which owns it, names three on its own site: Jack’s fried chicken, tempura okra, and the PM Burger — PM for Princess Margaret. The same page makes a point of the seafood being landed metres away on the beach. Lobster mac and cheese, tuna niçoise and salt-and-pepper squid recur across other coverage.

The drink to order is a Tony Gibbons rum punch, named for the beach’s older name, which Ins & Outs of SVG lists among the things Jack’s is known for along with its sunsets (Ins & Outs of SVG). Google’s business listing puts the spend at EC$20–120 a head, which is roughly US$7–45 — upper-middle for the region rather than resort pricing. Prices are in East Caribbean dollars and cards are accepted, which is not something you can assume everywhere in this chain.

Hours, from the venue’s own published information: 10am to 9pm overall, lunch service from 11:30, dinner from 6pm and the kitchen closing at 8:30. Several aggregator listings still say 11am to 11pm. Use the venue’s figures, and if dinner matters, book.

Sunset and the First Dinner Sitting

This is the detail worth planning around, and it changes across the season. Jack’s opens dinner service at 6pm and closes the kitchen at 8:30. Sunset at Bequia moves from about 5:37pm in early December to about 6:20pm at the end of April — so for the first seven weeks of the high season the sun is gone before the kitchen opens, and from roughly 19 January onwards it lands inside the first sitting.

Sunset times computed from solar position for the bar’s own location on Princess Margaret Beach, 13.0°N, in Atlantic Standard Time.

Jack’s Beach Bar opens dinner service at 6pm and closes its kitchen at 8:30pm. Sunset at Bequia runs from about 5:37pm in early December to about 6:20pm in late April, so from roughly 19 January the first dinner sitting coincides with sunset, while in December the sun sets 15 to 20 minutes before the kitchen opens.

What Else Is on Princess Margaret Beach?

More than some accounts suggest, and the sources genuinely disagree. Uncommon Caribbean wrote in December 2025 that you won’t find any other bars or restaurants on the beach. Ins & Outs of SVG, the island’s own visitor directory, describes Fay’s colourful beach shack tucked under the trees, with chairs for rent, cold drinks, rum punch and handmade jewellery, bags and beach wraps (Ins & Outs of SVG). Cruising World placed Bamboo Beach Bar and Grill mid-beach in 2024 (Cruising World).

Jack’s Beach Bar is the only full restaurant on Princess Margaret Beach, Bequia, but not the only place to get a drink. Ins & Outs of SVG describes Fay’s beach shack under the trees, and Cruising World placed Bamboo Beach Bar and Grill mid-beach in 2024. Published accounts disagree because the shack bars are seasonal.

The honest reconciliation is that Jack’s is the only full restaurant on the sand, sharing the beach with one or two shack bars that come and go. The Grenadines do the shack format better than anywhere, as Happy Island off Union Island proves. If a specific one of the smaller places matters to your afternoon, have the crew check it’s trading that week; these are small, weather-exposed operations.

One name that comes up in the same breath but doesn’t belong on this list: Bar One. It’s a floating bar moored out in Admiralty Bay, reached by water taxi rather than on foot, so it’s an evening out from the anchorage rather than somewhere you walk to along the sand.

What Is Bequia Like?

Small, salty and unusually self-possessed. Bequia is about seven square miles with roughly 4,500 residents, nine miles south of St. Vincent, and its main town is Port Elizabeth at the head of Admiralty Bay (Discover SVG). The population’s ancestry is a genuine mix: African, Scottish, Irish, French, Indian and Carib, plus later arrivals. That, along with a couple of centuries of building and sailing boats, is why the island feels different from its neighbours rather than merely prettier.

The boatbuilding is not a heritage exhibit. Bequia is billed by the national tourism authority as the model sailboat capital of the world, and the Sargeant Brothers model boat shop in Port Elizabeth still builds to order. Yachting reported in 2016 that a model took around three months and started upward of US$3,000, carved from white pine, mahogany and other sought-after woods (Yachting).

Full-size boats are still going up too. Trade media reported two new fourteen-foot double-enders in build in 2025, one of them on the island, in a tradition that began when a Bequian, William “Old Bill” Wallace, brought two second-hand New England whaleboats here in the 1870s. The Bequia Heritage Museum above Friendship Bay keeps the boatbuilding record (All At Sea).

Where Does Bequia Fit in a Grenadines Week?

At the start, almost always. The standard southbound run — one of the classic Grenadines charter routes — goes St. Vincent, Bequia, Mustique, Canouan, Mayreau and the Tobago Cays, which makes Bequia the first real stop and the shakedown day, nine miles from where you boarded.

That position suits it. Admiralty Bay has provisioning, chandlery and a town worth walking, with the Frangipani on the waterfront and Coco’s Place over at Lower Bay if you want a night off the beach, so it’s the natural place to sort out anything the first day exposed — and Jack’s Beach Bar, Bequia, is the reward at the end of it. Later in the week the anchorages get emptier and smaller: Mustique, then Salt Whistle Bay on Mayreau. Our full seven-day Grenadines itinerary maps the whole run.

When Should You Go?

December through April for the sailing, with two weeks to plan around. The trade winds are steadiest across the high season, and from late January the sunset-and-dinner overlap at Jack’s is at its best.

The two busy periods are worth knowing. SVG Sailing Week, which now absorbs the long-running Bequia Easter Regatta, ran 29 March to 6 April in 2026 across St. Vincent, Canouan and Bequia (Caribbean Compass). The Bequia Music Festival fills late January. Both are excellent reasons to be there and poor weeks to expect a quiet anchorage.

Cruise traffic is real but small in scale. Bequia takes expedition and boutique ships rather than the big hulls, and they tender into Port Elizabeth rather than to Princess Margaret Beach, so it changes the town for a few hours rather than the beach.

Other Stops in the Grenadines

Bequia is the first stop of a Grenadines week, not the only one. Further south:

• Basil’s Bar — the overwater bar on Mustique, in its fiftieth year in 2026.
• Salt Whistle Bay — a sand bar on Mayreau with the Caribbean on one side and the Atlantic on the other.
• Happy Island — the bar on the reef in Clifton Harbour, Union Island.

Jack’s Beach Bar, Bequia, is the easy first afternoon of that week, and the table is the part to book rather than hope for. To build a week that starts in Admiralty Bay and works south, start a yacht search at Vital Charters and we’ll put Bequia, Mustique and the Cays in the right order for your dates.