Traffic backs up behind the flagger on Centerline Road most afternoons this week, a dozen cars idling in the sun while a paver crew works through Upper Carolina. Somewhere in that line, someone always asks the same question: is Lime Out even open right now? The two things have nothing to do with each other. One is a road crew finishing a paving job before Labor Day. The other is a floating taco bar that pulls itself out of the water every year when hurricane season peaks. They just happen to be closed at the same time, and that coincidence is doing a lot of unnecessary damage to how Coral Bay feels this month.
Here is what's actually happening, and why neither closure says anything about the other.
What's Actually Torn Up
The Department of Public Works started milling and paving on Centerline Road, Route 10, on Tuesday, August 18, beginning in the Upper Carolina section of Coral Bay and working outward. The work runs through Friday, August 28, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with one-lane closures in effect during those hours while contractor Grace Civil LLC handles the resurfacing. If you're driving between Coral Bay and the rest of the island during the workday, budget extra time and expect a flagger, not a detour. The St. John Tradewinds alert on this is worth a bookmark if you're commuting daily.
This is routine road maintenance with a hard end date. By the time September starts, the milling crews should be gone and the surface should be better than it was in July.
What's Actually Dark
Lime Out, the floating taco bar anchored in Coral Bay Harbor, closed for the season on August 14 and won't reopen until October 11. That's a different animal than its usual Saturday closure during the regular season. This is the annual hurricane-season pull, when the operators haul the platform and take roughly ten weeks off the water entirely.
The reason is structural, not seasonal marketing. Lime Out is a pontoon-mounted cottage with no permanent dock, no fixed mooring built for storm surge, and no land underneath it if a system comes through. Late August through mid-October is the peak stretch of the Atlantic hurricane season, and there's no version of "we'll ride it out" that makes sense for a structure that floats on lily pads a hundred feet offshore. Pulling it before the peak, rather than reacting to a specific storm, is the safer bet every year.
None of that has anything to do with Centerline Road. One closure answers to a paving schedule. The other answers to the tropics. They just landed in the same two weeks.
What Hasn't Moved
Here's the part that actually matters if you live here: the weekly rhythm that runs on land, away from both the road crew and the harbor, hasn't skipped a single night.
| Day | What's Happening | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Happy hour, 4 to 6 p.m., $1 off drinks. Bingo, 6 to 9 p.m. | Skinny Legs; Johnny Lime |
| Tuesday | Happy hour, 4 to 6 p.m. Open mic night, 5 to 8 p.m. | Skinny Legs; Johnny Lime |
| Wednesday | Happy hour, 4 to 6 p.m. Trivia, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. | Skinny Legs; Johnny Lime |
| Thursday | Happy hour, 4 to 6 p.m. Open mic night, 5:30 to 9 p.m. | Skinny Legs; Miss Lucy's |
| Friday | Happy hour, 4 to 6 p.m. Live music with Rich Greengold, 5 to 8 p.m. | Skinny Legs; Johnny Lime |
| Saturday | Corn hole tournament, 6 to 9 p.m. | Johnny Lime |
| Sunday | Brunch with Rich Greengold, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. | Surf Club Cantina |
That's the standing weekly lineup at the land-based spots, and it's built to survive exactly this kind of month. Skinny Legs has been running horseshoes, darts, and its no-fryer burger menu out of Estate Emmaus since 1991, through hurricanes and paving projects alike, and its happy hour doesn't check the DPW's schedule before it starts. Johnny Lime's trivia and bingo nights don't require a boat. Miss Lucy's Thursday open mic has been the anchor for the harbor side of the neighborhood for years now.
The road will be repaved by the end of the month. Lime Out will be back on the water in October. Neither of those facts touches Wednesday trivia night.
If you're new enough to Coral Bay that this month feels unsettled, the honest read is that it isn't. A construction crew working a fixed schedule and a private business making a seasonal call about storm exposure are two separate decisions made by two separate parties for two separate reasons. Neither one is a signal about the other, and neither one touches the actual social calendar that defines a week here.
The Point, Plainly
Coral Bay has always run on more than one clock. The harbor has its own rhythm, tied to boats and storms and moorings. The road has its own maintenance calendar, set by the territory. And the bars and restaurants up on land run on a weekly beat that answers to neither one. This month just happens to be the rare stretch where you can see all three clocks at once, which makes it look busier and more disrupted than it actually is.
By the second week of October, Lime Out will be back on its lily pads. The paving crew is scheduled to finish before Labor Day. What won't change in the meantime is where you'll find live music on a Friday or who's calling bingo on a Monday.
If you're the kind of person who ends up thinking about this stretch of the island in a longer-term way, whether that's a hillside lot with a view of the harbor or a place close enough to walk to Skinny Legs on a Thursday, the team at Tropical Properties VI has spent more than three decades getting to know exactly this kind of detail about St. John. Browse Properties whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
