Virgin territory: Set sail for the British Virgin Islands, the Caribbean's chicest corner

Roderick Gilchrist - 

Sailors swear that the only true way to discover the West indies is to imitate Columbus - and do so by sea. Arriving on deck at one of the thousands of islands that dot the Caribbean - preferably under billowing sail - is life-enhancing. Only by boat can you appreciate each island's distinctive silhouette.

Columbus famously spotted one of the most beautiful on the horizon, and because he thought she lay like some high-bosomed virgin, named it Virgin Gorda.

Certainly, the Virgin Islands continue to revel in their reputation for seducing sailors centuries after Columbus. Today every manner of craft - from Russian billionaire super-yachts to our modest cutter - swish through the foamy waters, which locals claim makes them the sailing capital of the world. With favourable trade winds and calm anchorages, they are certainly a safe haven for helmsmen.

From the air, it looks as though a painter flicked his brush at the ocean. More than 60 islands make up the British Virgin islands group, some rising hardly higher than the reef around them. They have names straight from the Pirates of The Caribbean films, including Dead Chest and Mosquito Island.

Richard Branson's Necker is the most famous. He bought it for £180,000 in the seventies, about what it now costs to rent for a week. I've stayed on Necker in the same room the Princess of Wales slept in when she was a guest. I couldn't wait to leave. Mosquitoes attacked me in squadrons.

There are no airstrips big enough to carry jets to the islands, so crowds are kept to a minimum. Most visitors arrive on bumpy propeller flights from Antigua. These land at Tortola before visitors board surf-skimming launches to reach these little palm-fringed paradises.

There are a number of exotic hideaway hotels in the BVI - cottages camouflaged by tropical foliage on hillsides ablaze with purple bougainvillea - all set to the soundtrack of hummingbirds. When we checked into the Falcon's Nest on Peter Island, Robert De Niro had just quietly left. It's a spectacular new-build Moorish villa, perched 300ft above the reef overlooking the Sir Francis Drake Channel and Norman Island - on which Robert Louis Stevenson allegedly modelled Treasure island. Legend insists that a fishing family, sheltering in one of its sea caves, stumbled across a pirates' haul of buried golden doubloons. There's no proof, but it's a charming story.

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