This is a well-known snorkel tour destination. There's a guarded dirt parking lot, a dive shop and some kind of "paint your own souvenir" art business. The "beach" is a narrow strip of coral gravel that is barely wide enough to fit the row of rentable beach chairs. This tourist attraction is right next to a big oil rig maintenance dock. When we were there there was a giant oil rig being worked on. The combination of industrial and tourist is kind of surreal. One thing we realized is that since almost all of the tourists are Dutch, everyone over the age of 8 chain smokes (In the Netherlands, the legal smoking age is 5, but since many parents consider cigarettes to be a choking hazard, they don't start buying their children cigarettes until they are about 8). As someone who comes from a place where people haven't smoked since the '90s, it is almost startling to be surrounded by people constantly smoking everywhere you go (in hotels, restaurants, the pool, beaches, etc.). If you are a smoker, you'll be in paradise in the Netherlands Antilles. I went against my principles and rented beach chairs here, but it was hard to lay there and relax with the clouds of smoke drifting over you from people sitting 3' away. But it all doesn't really matter since the real point of coming to Tugboat Beach is to snorkel or scuba dive out to the wreck of a small steel-hulled tug. I didn't think this spot had as much fish or coral as nearby Director's Bay, but it was still pretty good, if a little crowded.
