Helicopter from Miami to Chub Cay

Most parties come here for one reason and it is under the boat, not on the island. The Tongue of the Ocean, the trench that runs down the middle of the Bahamas, reaches around six thousand feet and ends just off the northwest corner of the Berries. Where that deep water meets the shallow bank is the ground the fishing fleet calls the Pocket, and it is why this island is known as the billfish capital of the Bahamas. Blue marlin, white marlin, sailfish, tuna, wahoo and mahi-mahi all come out of the same few miles of water. Boats are arranged on the island and the tackle travels with you, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. Say at the enquiry how many are fishing and whether you are trolling or on the flats. The flats side runs through bonefishing and flats access and the full day through a fishing day by air.

The shallow half of the water sits even closer in. Mama Rhoda Rock stands a few hundred yards west of the marina, with staghorn coral in the shallows around it and eels in the heads, and it is snorkelling depth rather than diving depth. Because it is that close, half a morning in the water and a long lunch ashore both fit inside the same visit. The reef is about five minutes by boat from the marina, which on an island this size means the tender is the whole logistics chain. Say how many are swimming when you send the date, and whether anyone is diving rather than snorkelling. Add water toys if the afternoon is going to be spent on the water, or a dock pickup if a boat is meeting you.

Past the reef the bottom stops being a bottom. The wall drops off the edge of the bank into the trench, with caves and caverns cut into it, and the sites along that edge run from about ten feet down to a hundred. That range is the unusual part. On most islands the shallow snorkelling and the deep wall are an hour apart by boat. Here they are the same short run, so a party with one diver and three swimmers does not have to split the day in two. Tanks, fills and boats are arranged on the island. The wider water side of a day here runs through island hopping, and the aircraft waits either way rather than turning around.

If the day is not about the water it is usually about the sand. The south side of the island carries the beaches, all of them a short walk or a golf cart ride from the marina, and none of them with anything built along them. This is the quiet end of the Bahamas rather than the busy one. Forty six people live here and there is no town behind the beach, which is the whole reason a certain kind of guest asks for this island instead of a bigger one. A beach picnic goes to whichever end of the shore the wind is not on that day, and a golf cart is the only transport the island needs.

The Berries carry one of the two blue holes in the chain, and the one people travel for is on Hoffman's Cay, up the chain from here. It sits inland behind a beach, a dark circle in the rock with a cliff of about twenty feet hanging over the edge of it. People jump off that cliff, which is most of why the cay is on this list. The walk in from the beach is short and the water in the hole is flat whatever the sea outside is doing. It is a boat run rather than a walk from the marina, so it is a morning and not an hour. Say it at the enquiry and it is arranged from the island end with the rest of the day.

Bullocks Harbour on Great Harbour Cay is the main settlement of the Berry Islands, which in a chain of about thirty islands and more than a hundred cays still means a village rather than a town. Great Harbour Cay is the largest island in the chain, about eight miles long, and its named beaches are Sugar Beach, Shelling Beach and Sand Dollar Hill. It is where the chain has shops, a harbour and people, and it is the counterweight to the forty six residents at the southern end. A party that wants one day empty and one day with somebody in it can have both without leaving the Berries. Two cays in the chain are not open to anybody: Great Stirrup Cay and Little Stirrup Cay, the one the ships call CocoCay, are held by cruise lines, and a number of smaller cays are privately owned and need an invitation from the owner. The aircraft can take you up the chain and back inside the same booking, because once you are cleared into the Bahamas the second leg is domestic. That is a line in the enquiry rather than a second charter.

Chub Cay is closer to Nassau than it is to Florida. Nassau lies about 37 statute miles south across the channel, roughly 33 nautical, which is a quarter of the run in from Miami. That is why the island works as a base and not only as a destination. A party can be at the reef in the morning and in town in the afternoon, or the other way round, on the same aircraft and without a second international clearance, because both ends are already inside the Bahamas. Where the day is really about the capital rather than the Berries, Miami to Nassau by helicopter is the direct version of this crossing and the shorter one.

A helicopter charter to Chub Cay also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on to Andros, Harbour Island, Grand Bahama or Staniel Cay and the Exumas. That is what turns one island into a wider Bahamas day. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. The full island guide sits on the Chub Cay destination page, the packaged version is the Chub Cay getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.